Rebirth
by Motorcycle.Iris
Summary: Post apocalyptic; zombies, demigods, heartache, death, and shedding old skins.
1. Prologue

Prologue: Parallel Paths

_A family all but torn a part. I fought with courage to preserve, not my way of life but yours. Carry on, don't mind me, all I gave was everything. Yet, you ask me for more. Fought your fight, bought your lie, in return, I lost my life. What purpose does this serve?_

2014

She couldn't stop smiling as she looked out over the city; the view was breathtaking. Her view was breathtaking.

"Careful, your face can get stuck like that," came her husband's voice behind her, the sound of boxes being torn open following. In the background, she could hear her sons thumping around the expansive new surroundings; her toddler child darted between her legs, shrieking with joy, brown curls bouncing.

She looked from her small daughter to her husband and back, finally turning from the floor to ceiling glass to help in the unpacking. Their new 3,600 square foot top floor penthouse, echoing with the rips and tears of paper and packing tape, was their first home. The home was a rectangle, the front door opening to an open concept plan of dark polished floors and stainless accents. The living room was sunken in, with plans for a wrap around sectional to fill the space. Their kitchen was to the East; the corner framed with glass walls and a cozy patio off the dining room. To the west were the bedrooms and an office; Jack & Jill bedroom/bathroom combos for the boys, an en suite for the young couple with another cozy patio, and a guest bath at the end of the hall. It was more than Sam could have ever dreamed, and she wasn't sure if she should be angry, shocked, or happy about her husband cashing in his pension to make the down payment on the luxury space. She was still a mixture of all three. He had done it for her, he did everything for her.

They'd been through everything in the short four years of their marriage; both recovering from staggering divorces, scraping by to make ends meet, they found one another by chance. Sam knew she couldn't live her life without him the moment she met him, and they eloped six weeks after.

Their sounds of unpacking was disturbed again by her husband's panicked voice, "Sam? Sam! SAM!" Suddenly her children's shrieks of joy were of terror, she smelled smoke, and blood and everything was chaos.

2024

Sam opened her eyes with a start. That wasn't her life anymore, and each time she was ripped from it in her dreams, it ached a little less. The dreams weren't as frequent as they used to be, as the years went by. She rolled to her side, sighing and laying her hand on the vacant space next to her. For a moment, she could almost smell him in the sheets. She buried her face into his pillows, silently loathing the sunlight prying through her dark curtains.

Wallowing enough, she supposed, Sam rose and shuffled into the kitchen, grey early morning light filtering in from beneath the dark shutters on the floor to ceiling windows. Pouring her coffee, she sat at the kitchen table and managed to make her hands stop shaking, to put the sadness in her eyes away so that she could face the day.

Two young men sleepily walked into her kitchen. One tall and thin, with brown eyes, olive skin, and chocolate-brown hair. The other one and a half heads shorter, slightly younger, fair-skinned with blue-green eyes and sandy blonde hair. They were complete opposites, always had been. The trio greeted one another in their usual way of head nods; her drinking her coffee, them rummaging through the cabinets. She ruffled her sons' hair and moved to open the heavy shutters, one by one illuminating the penthouse.

After refilling her cup, she walked to the sliding glass door of the dining room, and opened it, pausing as she remembered, "Mike? Lee? Don't forget to make lists, I'm going out in a few days, okay?" Not giving them a moment to protest, she slid the door shut behind her, settling her arms on the wide ledge of the patio, her cup steaming next to her. She peered down at the city streets twenty stories below. All was quiet, and deceptively serene. There was even a nice breeze from the distant coast, and she wrapped her fluffy robe tighter around her neck. She breathed in the muggy morning air, and her hair already threatened to frizz at the looming humidity of the soon to be oppressively hot summer day.

From her vantage point, so high up, she couldn't make out the scene below in the streets, but she knew what was there. Wrecked vehicles, bodies, and the Infected filled the streets. It would almost seem a normal day in the bustling city, until you looked closer at the blood spattered here and there; the pedestrians filling the streets and sidewalks weren't rushing around in their morning commutes, no. This was the shuffling of the Infected. If she closed her eyes, she could hear their piercing cries in her mind, see the carnage of the living being torn apart.

This was her life, now. Survival in a post apocalyptic world that was reminiscent of a movie script.

This was her life now, and it was a living nightmare.

* * *

Loki was miserable.

Loki had been miserable for over a human decade.

After his last deception and attempts to rule Asgard, the Alfather wanted him executed. The only thing saving Loki's skin his oaf of a brother Thor still believing in his "redemption." It was laughable, and his lips still curled in a sneer at the thought. Their clever punishment was open-ended; Loki was to be cast out, with a limited amount of magic, and to fend for himself and live among the beings he meant to rule.

It was beneath him, this existence. He would rather have died, and had tried on many occasions. This was where the small amount of magic was allowed to remain, he was kept alive against all odds, forbidden to return to his true power and home until a sufficient lesson was learned.

It was easy enough at first, this exile. Deceiving humans was child's play, and the fallen demigod quickly had money and residences, blended within their society undetected. The Alfather had the smallest decency to exile him in a fairly remote location, where none would recognize him. He kept to himself, bided his time, and planned to wait out his exile for as long as needed.

And then those infernal humans, with their want to destroy themselves, had to go and make everything slightly more difficult. Always tinkering with their mortality, their magicians (scientists, he learned they were called) had created a sickness, a disease by mistake. The virus spread rapidly, inciting rage in its victims and wake, murder and chaos the likes of which they had never seen and were ill-equipped to handle. Their number dwindled quickly, and had he been at full strength this realm would have been his for the taking. Much to his own dismay, Loki could only watch, a spectator to the carnage that they rained down upon themselves.

True to their pest-like nature, the humans failed to die out as he had predicted they would. Forever surprising him in their tenacity, they began to find themselves survivors, and banded together to combat the plague. Their "scientists," or what was left of them, had yet to find a cure for the disease. They fought, erecting massive walls around their towns, expanding as more survivors wandered through. Electricity and politics, and a primitive form of what they once had slowly emerged. Loki refused to be impressed, ants rebuild colonies, after all.

Unable to capitalize, and unwilling to help, Loki travelled. He saw the world, what was left of it, saving what was formerly the United States as his last stop. The major cities still being shut down, and in the process of mild discord and repair, he was forced to port at another unknown (not that he cared) part of the southeastern shores of the country. It was hot, the air damp and heavy, and Loki couldn't wait to leave.

He began to wander through the abandoned streets, as he always did. Roaming was what he did, these days...what else was there to do? He occasionally entered the recovering cities, observing the scuttling of the humans, as they tried to rebuild their societies. He avoided them at all costs, walking until he was tired, then taking whatever vehicles he could find and using them, driving until he was tired. Sometimes he slept in the vehicles, sometimes he slept in lodging if he found any that wasn't decrepit. The infected never bothered him much, if they did they were easily disposed of.

This was his life now. And it was a boring, living nightmare.


	2. Chapter One

_How we survive is what makes us who we are._

Brad was tired, but then again, when wasn't he and weren't they all? He'd been patient with Sam for the past two years, allowed her to take the lead of their lives without raising too much of a fuss. She was strong, stronger than anyone he used to know. She was smart, and she knew how to adapt quickly. She kept them all alive more times than he could count, and she personally saved his skin when she could have left him for dead a year ago. They'd both lost in this mess, and they leaned heavily on each other in the wakes. She'd always loved hard, she had a heart bigger than anyone, and it killed him to see her harden more and more as the months passed. He was always warm with her, her own personal sunshine that she needed so much when the world went to shit. His almost black eyes, flecked with red near the irises, were bloodshot, clearly Sam wasn't the only one not sleeping. His equally dark mass of curls was unruly, but he liked it that way. Brad was worried about her, she could adapt quickly and shoulder on, sure. What he also knew about her was that she would keep piling it on until she buried herself. He wasn't sure how much longer she'd go before she started to crack.

He was in the middle of losing a chess match to Sam's oldest son, Michael. The boy was twenty, and smart as all hell. He'd rewired the entire tower so that the electricity from the generators ran into their penthouse alone. They were working on getting some solar panels up and running because gas was getting hard to come by. They made their own crude versions of panels with supplies gathered over the years, and with this last trip he was hoping that they'd provide enough energy so they could shut off the generators for good.

It had been two days since Sam had announced to her sons that she would be going out. It had been two days of fighting with her second son, Lee. Lee was a doer, he was rugged, physical, and strong, and a damn good shot and he knew he'd be an asset to his mom. He also couldn't wait to get out of the penthouse and see real action again. Since they had fortified the penthouse building, and cleared the sewer paths that his mom used to get in and out of town, he'd been confined to the tower. It wasn't THAT bad, they had electricity, and video games. There was running water from the rain they collected on the roof and pumped into their plumbing. They always had chores to keep themselves occupied, and the garden on the roof always needed something.

Still, he felt useless.

He thought he had proven to his mom and to Brad that he was capable, that he could help her and she wouldn't have to go it alone anymore. It wasn't always like this, he had been firing guns and killing off the Infected since he was eight. For years it was 'all hands on deck,' everyone contributed. Everything changed when his step-dad died, his mom put everyone on lockdown. Only she and Brad left the tower, and a guilty part of him was hopeful that with Brad's injury he could go and do. His brother didn't seem to mind, he was more of the tech behind their electricity and gadgets and was content to stay inside. They rarely saw their sister anymore, she was on the brink of being a teenager and kept to herself and the garden, mostly. This was all she had ever known, it all started when she was a baby.

If Lee wasn't the precision shooter for his family, what was he supposed to do? It's what he was best at. He had let it go initially, they were all grieving, and he knew better than to go against his mom when she kept insisting on going out alone. It had been two years, he was going insane. So, when his mom asked for his supply list, he knew exactly what he needed from her. If she was the kind of mom to hit her kids, he would have expected a cracking smack across his face with the way she looked at him after she glanced over the note in the living room that afternoon.

_Let me help you._

"Are you serious with this, Lee?" Sam all but screeched, drawing the curious attentions of Brad and Mike from the kitchen table.

"Come on, mom. I've been watching, their numbers aren't going down. You need the help, and you know I'm a good shot. Let me back out there," Lee pleaded. He may have been a head taller than his mother, but he still felt she towered over him in that moment.

"I'm too tired for this," she mumbled in reply as she spun on her heel and walked to the stairs that lined the west wall of the room, leading to the roof. When he opened his mouth to argue, she raised a hand without ever looking at him or slowing her pace, "I said not now. I'll get some new shoes and see if I can find some of those old comics anywhere for you."

The rooftop door shut with a thud behind her.

* * *

"You need more ammo."

"Yeah, I know, just don't tell the boys that," Sam sighed as she inspected her layout. Spread out on her bedroom floor was her leather body suit; pants, boots and gloves that served as her first layer of protection. Then came the body armor, she had Kevlar pieces to cover her legs and arms, her torso and her back. Black canvas cargo pants that she would tuck into her boots stored the majority of her extra ammunition for her guns, and a long sleeved black cotton shirt would cover the armor.

Her firepower included three small handguns; one SiG P226 for each thigh one Springfield XD45 for her right hip, and a semi-automatic SiG P556 that she would wear on her left hip.

Sam pulled her collection of Ka-Bar knives from their case across the room. "I'll make sure to stock up on the trip, you know I don't like to use the guns if I don't have to," she said absent mindedly as she selected several blades that she would later affix to her arms and legs with their various straps and holsters.

Brad had been helping her prep, making sure the guns were cleaned and that she didn't forget anything. He ran a hand across his face in frustration, hating every time she went, but knowing that to survive, she had to go. He'd taken a serious leg injury last year and walked with a considerable limp, he was confined to the safety of the penthouse and it drove him insane. He set his squared jaw, preparing for an argument.

"Lee can go with you, I'll give him the SOCOM rifle, he can clear from the roof of the storage unit while you plow through. He's a good shot, and he won't be in harm's way. Michael can even work with him, you know you're all a good team. The boys will be back into the tunnels before anything gets near them,". He watched Sam's hands still momentarily, and giving him a look that was positively lethal, she squared her shoulders and stared at him for a moment.

"Brad," she warned, but he cut her off.

He crossed his arms over his chest, "No, you're being fucking stupid. If something happens to you, those boys are going to have to step up and be the ones out there. Do you really want them to have to do that without any training for two years or more? And what about Harper? She has no training at all, she's completely defenseless without you. Sam, you have to come back to reality, THIS reality. You can't save everyone, and we need to work as a team again. We need to be able to survive on our own, and like it or not that means taking them outside of the tower."

Sam saw red, but her voice was level, "Then I guess it's a good thing that I'm not going anywhere anytime soon. He's my son, and I say that he stays."

Without another glance, she went back to her knives.

Brad knew he had been dismissed, and let out a puff of air in frustration. Before leaving the room, he tossed the small tub of her purple hair dye that he'd been twirling onto her bed.

"You know," he paused at her door, "It's okay to say his name."

He saw her back go rigid, "I hear it enough in the arena," she replied softly.

He hated how she closed herself off, but knew he wasn't any better and couldn't hate her for it. Feeling helpless and frustrated as ever, he left her room. Crossing the hall to his own room, he went straight to his closet, pulling the semi-automatic rifle from it's case and carried it one door down to Lee's room. The boy looked up just to see Brad enter, place the weapon against the wall and stack the ammo cartridges on the dresser next to it, stare at him for a beat and then walk out. Brad leaned against his closed bedroom door, knowing Sam would kill him, but knowing it needed to be done.

Sam didn't miss a beat, she finished her prep and scooped up the hair dye, briskly walking into her bathroom and stripping down. She angrily glopped the product into her long dark brown hair, knowing that the grey strands would create lighter purple highlights. Section by section she worked it in, and by the time she was done she was sweating and angry and tired and on the brink of tears. She collected herself, washed her hands and opened her contact case. She placed the blue lenses over her green eyes, blinking rapidly to ease them into place.

Sitting on the floor in front of her layout, she glanced around her too-large bedroom. The walls were a soft grey, smooth tile that looked like dark wood covered her floor, a plush white rug beneath her bed. Reaching a hand up to run it along the royal blue comforter, she could hear him in her mind.

_"You better be glad that blue is my favourite colour," her husband sighed as he fluffed the new blanket onto the bed._

_Sam giggled, "It's Everton blue! There IS no better colour choice, my dear. Now let's talk hardwood for the floor. I like the dark," she looked at the samples on the beige carpet. _

_"Let's talk about tile," he countered, moving to stand in front of her. She let out a groan and threw her head back, giggling as he wrapped his arms around her waist. "Why not the tile that's made to look like wood grain? Best of both worlds?" _

_She looked into his almond-shaped brown eyes, "You really are the best. Hey!" She jumped excitedly, "We just picked out our new floors!" Encircling his neck with her arms, she stood on her tiptoes and kissed him quickly, squealing again in delight._

She was facing the patio, the sunset painting the sky shades of brilliant orange and red. She rose and pulled the thick white drapes over the doors to block the lights to anyone that would be outside, not that anyone other than the Infected were out there, and they couldn't access the entrance to the tower, anyway.

She went to her dark wood dresser and pulled out the navy blue tank top and grey bike shorts she would wear underneath her layers of protection tomorrow morning. Tossing them into the chair in the corner, she grabbed breezy linen pants and a camisole and made her way to rinse the product out, hoping she could rinse her fears down the drain, too.

* * *

**AN: weee! How excited was I to get my very first review on the DAY I posted the prologue?! Sorry, no Loki and it's slow going, but character development and all. He'll be in the next chapter, oh so much, and things will start to pick up.**


	3. Chapter Two

_All we are is entertainment, caught up in our own derangement…picture perfect bottled rage…But this is more than entertainment, in this world so sick with pain…We all scream bloody murder over things already done, but can't you see the end is coming soon? If we cared at all about this unknown plight, then we'd do something more to finally make this right._

The humans in America had clearly been surviving longer than the ones Loki ran across in his other world travels. The rest of the world was mostly barren wasteland, with the Infected beginning to die off after over a decade of destruction, there was nothing left to destroy. In America, the greater cities had fallen rapidly due to the dense populations and the nature of the disease. The smaller towns were able to fight off the Infected more efficiently; erecting walls, defending it, pushing the Infected back, and expanding the walls one block at a time. It was from these small towns that considerable cities slowly formed, from the ashes of their civilization, their technologies wrecked and needing to be reborn again. Painfully slowly, electricity came back. Then the power plants, clean water, and the televised news stations. Politics, money, greed and corruption came forth again. They rebuilt their weapons, their defense systems, and had armies in each of their cities to defend their walls from any invading Infected hoards. It had been years since any of the major cities had been breached, and the humans found themselves living again, instead of surviving.

He had seen an astonishing amount of grit in his wanderings, but he had also come across disturbing coping mechanisms. They reminded him of the barbaric civilizations in the ancient Roman empires with their colosseums and bloody shows. It was at one of these arenas that he found himself as an open-mouthed viewer, he was unimpressed, not amused, and slightly disgusted in the amount of vitriolic passion in which the humans loved their "sports." Had they not suffered enough, lost enough in the plague of the Infected? Was more death and more killing really a need to take their minds from the death and killing that still existed beyond their walls?

This particular arena was a half circle, the open part leading out to a mile long stretch that the contenders had to travel before reaching the spot beneath Loki's viewpoint. The entirety of it enclosed by two-story high concrete walls, overturned vehicles, various ramps and obstacles along the way. The stretch was littered with cameras, and in turn there were screens before them erected high up to view what was happening. He watched as men lined up at the start, revving engines of motorcycles and ATV's to the crowd's delight. At the unceremonious sounds of the vault behind them wrenching open, what looked like a hundred of the Infected spilled forth, the line of men moving forward with their vehicles to escape. There was a point system, so much for so many Infected killed during the mile long stretch, triple for if they made it to the semi-circle arena. The winner would be deemed the rider with the most points that was still alive at the conclusion, and would receive monies based on the points earned.

There seemed a clear favorite; a short, slender man in all black, riding a motorcycle, with a glossy black helmet, his face obscured by the darkly tinted visor, a royal blue scarf the only break in the black attire, and barely visible beneath the helmet. He watched them maneuver the obstacles, the favourite rider more skilled than the others; he concentrated on a slower speed, but used the obstacles to his own advantages by slowing the Infected. Two riders fell before ever reaching the first ramps, one more trying in vain to kill the Infected outright with a spray of bullets from a semi-automatic weapon. One more couldn't fit his ATV between two obstacles, so he quickly abandoned it and ran on foot, shooting down Infected as he went. He lasted three yards from his ATV before being overrun. That left the favourite, the crowd cheering as he jumped an overturned yellow bus, riding along the top and then landing on the dirt path, entering the semi-circle arena. Loki watched as the rider rode to the far end just beneath where he stood, turned the bike with his foot firmly planted to the dirt, and came to a stop as he un-holstered a semi-automatic weapon from his right hip, unloading clip after clip into the remaining seventy-five or so Infected that were quickly encircling. He reloaded each clip quickly, and discarded the gun when he seemed to be out of bullets. Loki was surprised to see that without breaking pace, the rider, still straddling his bike, began pulling out knives and flicking them into the dozen-ish Infected. He hadn't seen a human wield blades like that, and was suddenly and curiously intrigued.

In his shocked state, Loki could still feel his brother's presence before he heard him speak.

"Have care, brother, with your mouth aghast as such, you risk catching flies," Thor chuckled beside him. Loki clamped his mouth shut with an audible click, exhaling loudly from his nostrils like a bull.

During his brief multiple imprisonments on Asgard, Thor had visited Loki every day, and slowly began to break down the barriers of years of hate and mistrust between them. It only continued as Thor plead for Loki's life before his father, falling to his knees threatening tears of real grief at the thought of his death. Perhaps Frigga's death had softened the old man, maybe it was the sight of his true son before him on his golden knees. Whichever the case, Thor was granted his request, and Loki had lived. The younger brother, seething with anger at being indebted to his elder counterpart, would take many years for him to even acknowledge Thor's presence on his many trips to earth to visit with his exiled sibling. But still, he came as often as he could, and when Loki was at his lowest, Thor was there. It was a small respite of his banishment, Thor's company, even if Loki was loathe to admit to it most days.

At his lowest, near weeping and begging for his own end, feeling helpless and worthless, Loki confronted Thor in a half-hearted rage.

_Loki couldn't live anymore if it meant a life without magic, life without the one thing that he had that had set him apart from those around him. The ONE THING that had been truly and utterly his, and his alone. He had tried all manners of suicide, to no avail. After his latest failed attempt, he found his brother at his side, in all of his perfect golden glory. Loki couldn't take it, anymore. The inferiority, the injustice of it all. He launched himself at Thor with an inhuman rage. As if he had anticipated it, and without the aid of Loki's magic, Thor subdued his tortured younger brother easily._

_"You promised me, Thor! You promised me that if I betrayed you, you would kill me. What is your word, now, brother?!" Loki spat the last word as if it were a curse._

_Thor held his darker sibling against a building, pleading calmly into his eyes, "I promised you that I would kill you, and so I have. You are not the Loki that I have known of late. You are a changed man, yet you refuse to see it for yourself. I have kept my word, and I have killed that vile man who was a betrayer of his family. Before me is the brother I knew, the brother I loved. You will see that in time."_

_Loki could only stare slack-jawed. Thor left him there in a stunned heap, on a dark lonely street somewhere in Europe._

Without a response, Thor pressed on in an amused tone, "I didn't take you as one for sports of such a nature. Have you changed in ways that I do not know?"

Loki dismissed his brother with a wave of his hand, "I have not. If I am to 'learn a lesson' to appease Odin to end this banishment, I am starting with calculated observation. I do not think I will learn much, however…Tell me of home." Thor delightedly launched into an animated update that fell on Loki's deaf ears. He watched as the rider eliminated all but one Infected, a raging behemoth of what used to be a man. The knife that was thrown missed it's mark, and in the blink of an eye, the rider toppled off of their bike, landing with a thud on the hard packed dirt. Loki had begun to avert his gaze, seeing enough bloodshed for the day, but snapped his eyes quickly back to the arena when he heard with his above human hearing the sound of ribs cracking, and a distinctly female cry of pain. He narrowed his eyes at the rider, who faced the Infected man above them and embedded a blade between its ribs. He heard what was clearly a woman grunt in exertion and pain as she then pulled a handgun from her thigh and unloaded it into the stomach of the thing while it rained down blows upon her helmet and upper body. Without thinking, Loki's hand acted out of his own curiosity, and rose quickly from his side, he watched as the familiar immovability spell took hold on the Infected, allowing the rider a brief respite to cram a blade into its heart and kill it.

Wait…what? How had his magic worked? Loki looked to Thor, but found his brother had gone. He stared wide-eyed at his hand, then back to the rider, who was slowly rising from beneath the dead Infected. Above the din of the crowd, he heard her draw a shuttered breath, swearing and clutching her ribs. She raised her head, and stood as there was an announcement from the distorted speakers, declaring her victory.

"You have it again, folks! Your victor! Samuel Yung, everybody!" The rider never removed her cracked helmet, never acknowledged the crowd or the announcement, but walked to her damaged bike and set it up again. She collected her knives and her guns, replacing them into holsters that were camouflaged, black on the black of her clothing. Loki watched as she walked her bike from the arena to a now open door off to the side, stunned.

* * *

Her entire body ached. 'I'm getting too old for this shit,' she thought.

After leaving the arena, Sam had collected her winnings and left quickly at a side exit to avoid the crowds. She stowed her trashed Harley in the bed of her pick-up truck, covering it with the large brown canvas and securing it with ties. She tossed the helmet into the passenger seat, her violet braid dangling down to between her shoulder blades. She drove away, parking her truck into the hotel by the city's gates and removing one of her four large duffel bags, taking it and a small backpack with her inside. Removing her body armor inside the hotel room, she inspected the handiwork of the Infected that was dangerously too close for her liking. Her armor had protected most of her, but the bastard had found the few weak spots in her right side and shoulders. Carrying duffel bags all afternoon and evening wasn't going to be pleasant. She groaned a curse as she wrapped her side as best she could with an ACE bandage, and quickly redressed, changing out her disgusting clothes for baggy jeans and a nondescript blue t-shirt. Her arms were already starting to colour outstanding shades of brown and purple. At least she hadn't had any broken skin. Placing her disgusting clothing and body armor into her backpack, she grabbed the empty duffel, she re-holstered her SiG P226 to her right thigh and left the hotel to fill the bag with the first of the things her family wanted and needed from the shops and stores.

They grew a garden on the roof of the penthouse, and had vegetables and fruit aplenty to feed them all. She would purchase dry goods, grains, breads, milk and cheese products to carry home. It was a day long ride, and the perishables would be stored in coolers in the truck with ice that she would periodically refill for the trip. Once home, they would be portioned out into mason jars and frozen in deep freezers to keep them. If she could navigate the city's shops efficiently, she could be out of there by nightfall. She worked fast, filling one bag at a time with the perishables, and emptying it back at the truck into three coolers. Two of them were tucked behind the front two seats in the cab of the extended cab truck, one in the bed close to the cab. Two of the four bags was filled with their dry goods, one with various clothes and gadgets everyone wanted and needed back home. The bags would stack next to the cooler, her bike would lay strapped in front of them.

After replenishing her ammunition supply three times over into the fourth duffel, Sam nibbled on a protein bar and carried the too heavy bag through the crowds to get back to her truck. Without warning, someone jostled into her, causing her ribs to scream in pain. She grimaced as the stranger placed a hand to her less hurt left shoulder and bruised right hip to steady them both. Her eyes watered and widened, her right hand gripping her pistol, her left the bag on her shoulder, she looked to the offending pedestrian with a murderous glare and bit the inside of her cheek hard to keep from crying out. He held his slender hands up in surrender, quickly removing them from her, bright green eyes wide with apology. Sam took in his just past shoulder length black hair, tied back into a low pony-tail, his high cheek bones and pointed chin. He had sharp features, and was at least three heads taller than she, he was also much cleaner than the average city-citizen. He stepped back when he saw her hand at her pistol, speaking quickly.

"I'm so sorry, I'm new here and a bit lost. I didn't see you," he spoke with a lilting English accent that made her heart slam against her broken ribcage. Her husband had been English, it wasn't an accent she heard often. The man noticed her rigid posture and laughing nervously, he put his left hand on the back of his neck, and gestured to her protein bar on the ground, "Look, I really feel like quite an oaf. Would you let me buy you a meal to replace your bar? It's the least I can do, and maybe you can help me find my way around a bit? My name's Luke," he extended his right hand, intending to shake Sam's.

Sam clicked her gun in place, not removing her right hand from the grip, tightened her hold on her bag, and spoke through gritted teeth, "I'm not interested, and in a hurry. Pay more attention next time," and she left him standing there, swallowed by the crowd.

* * *

Loki smirked, thinking to himself that had she not been human, she would have roasted him where he stood with her smoldering glare. He was surprised to find he was having quite a bit of fun.

Following the rider from the arena had proven Loki's initial belief that he was indeed a she. He was shocked again to see unnatural violet hair in a braid down her back. Intriguing. He'd tested his magic all afternoon around her, as long as he aided her in some form or fashion (pushing a can closer to her reach, creating openings in the throngs of people she pushed through, etc.) it worked like it had never been taken from him. If he tried anything that wasn't aiding the woman, he got nothing. Not a single green spark.

'Why her?' he silently questioned Odin.

One thing was for certain, he wasn't letting the angry, violet haired little human out of his sight until he figured it out.

* * *

**AN: MAJOR PALM SLAP to my prologue. This story is set after the events of Thor 2, and any consequences that come from Loki's playing Odin. I totally forgot about Frigga's death, and those of you that have read (and not reviewed, I see you creepin'. :p ) up to this point, I've fixed my boo boo.**

**The arena was where I had my inspiration for the entire story, and I hope that I do it justice. This story has clawed at my head and been trying to get out for weeks. **

**Cookies to those that leave reviews. **


	4. Chapter Three

_Our shoulders bear an awful weight, but still we trudge on, just the same._

It was already well past early evening. 'Damn,' Sam thought to herself, as she tied down the canvas cover over her things in the bed of the truck. Her right shoulder screamed in protest, but she ignored it. Just as she ignored the pain in her ribs and her left hip. She wasn't done, yet, she could lick her wounds from the safety of the tower after she made it home. Readjusting the straps on her finger-less gloves and tightening the end of her braid, she ached to get home and wash the grease and grime from her hair.

_Home._

Sam knew there was a shit-storm waiting for her at home. As she was riding out, she distinctly heard gunshots, and didn't have to turn around to know that Lee had gone out. She was an odd mix of angry and proud; the mother in her was white-hot furious with her son for going against her, but the teacher in her was so proud that every shot was clean, every Infected that he hit dropped around her with one shot. Her husband was always so proud of the marksman that Lee had become, she considered that with a small pang to her gut. In hindsight, his help _had_ saved her bullets that she needed when she was in the arena, but that didn't change that she was still upset.

Closing the bed of the truck, she realized that she hadn't eaten that day and left the hotel to find a real meal. At the street corner was a small café with a gated terrace that she always ate at when she came into the city. It served coffee and tea, and various hot meals. It was a small brick building, with more seating outside than in. Sitting outside at a wrought iron table near the gate, she selected a meal of various lentils and cabbage with carrots and a stewed broth, and entered it into the small screen in the corner of the table. The world may have ended, but technology was always advancing. Meat was difficult to come by, raising livestock wasn't a safe practice just yet, not with so many Infected roaming outside of the city walls. Protein bars were a big deal, and the population had learned all manners of ways to make meat less meals. Sam often found her mouth watering at the thought of a triple cheeseburger and a strawberry milkshake, though.

Sam reached into a knapsack that had her knives and her sat-phone in it, she punched in the number for the sat-phone at the penthouse and waited patiently for someone to answer. A breathless Brad was there after one and a half rings.

"Hey, you okay?" Sam laughed, the first real laugh she'd expressed in days.

"Yeah, I'm just stuck in Atlanta for the night, I'll leave as soon as they let me out of the gates in the morning."

"What happened?" Brad was puzzled, normally Sam was on her way home at this point.

"I just ran into some issues, that's all," She lied. If she told Brad that she was injured, and that it slowed her down, the idiot might very well risk leaving the tower himself to come after her. "We need to talk about Lee. He followed me out of the tower and was clearing the route out for me."

The silence on the line was deafening.

"BRADLEY," she roared into the mouthpiece. Sam didn't know what she said after that because all she saw was red, she could feel the vein pulsing in her forehead, and imagined her face was cherry. "You tell the boys and Harper that I'm okay and that I will deal with ALL OF YOU tomorrow the SECOND I walk in the door. Is that crystal clear?" She seethed. Not giving him a chance to answer, she ended the call with, "I love you all, and I'll see you soon," pressing the hangup button. She tossed the phone into her bag with more force than was needed.

She angrily rolled out her knife set and began furiously scrubbing them down and polishing them like her life depended on it while she waited for her meal. It wasn't an uncommon sight to see someone cleaning a gun or a knife set out at a café, not around here, anyway. Practically everyone was armed to the teeth these days, you were a fool not to be. Her meal was set beside her, and she nodded her thanks as she felt the gate next to her rattle considerably. Glancing up, she noticed that the tall klutz stranger from earlier was leaning against the rail, not looking at her and holding his left ankle, a black backpack at his feet.

"Speaking of fools," Sam muttered as she blew on her food and took a bite. She watched him hobble into the cafe's gate and sit at the table directly across from her, facing slightly away from her. Rolling up her knives and putting them away, she took the moment to really look at him. Most city-dwellers didn't take time out of their bustle to acknowledge you on the street, not like he had…how curious. His appearance was different, as well. He was taller, cleaner, and his hands were long and slender. He wore clean fitted black jeans, a deep green v-neck t-shirt, and black sneakers. His nose was perfect. Having a bump in the middle of hers, noses were a thing that she noticed with people. She snorted a laugh in an ungraceful way into her next bit of food as he grimaced while inspecting his ankle. It caught his ear, and he glanced her way.

Propping her right elbow on the table, she rested her chin on her bended wrist, still holding her spoon, and looking straight into his green eyes, she swallowed her mouthful and asked, "How are you alive?"

He stilled his hands and raised a brow quizzically at her, "Pardon?" He turned to face her.

Sam casually shoveled another bite into her mouth, and spoke from the corner of her lips, "Well to start, you're _clean. _I don't see any visible scars, your clothes look brand new, you stumble around a city in a time where money is hard to come by and offer to throw some away on a meal for a stranger, you twist your ankle and act like you're dying. Either you've had a LOT of help along the way, or there's a comfortable little spot somewhere in this city that I haven't found. You don't look like you'd last a millisecond against a single Infected, yet you can't be a day passed 35. How have you kept yourself alive all these years? It's impossible, yet here you are."

Feeling irritated in her ranting, Sam placed some bills on the table, collected her things and stood to leave. He stood, as well.

"You remember me," a small smile brightened his face.

"You don't see the same face often more than once on trips to the city like this," she countered, moving to walk past him as his face fell a bit.

His next sentence stopped her, "Trips?" He brightened, "You're passing through, then? You have a car?" She craned her neck to look up at him, all mirth gone from her face. His words came tumbling out, "You see, I was in a bunker for awhile with my mates, when this started, until our food ran out. We've lived in an RV, driving around to avoid the Infected. We found food where we could and gas, but we always kept moving. It broke down outside the city gates and we were overrun. My friends…I was lucky, a patrol caught me, and they brought me in but, I-I can't survive in the city like this. They won't let me out of the gates without a car. Could you take me outside the gates? Please," he pleaded with her.

Sam began backing away from him, cursing her tired brain for her slip up. "Do I look like I give a damn about a charity case? Get a job, make some money, start a life. Have a happy existence." She spun on her heel and began walking away, hoping that was the end of it.

He grabbed his bag and caught up to her in two long strides on the sidewalk beyond the cafe's gate, "I know you're Samuel Yung," he blurted out.

That got her attention. Sam felt like the wind was knocked out of her, she whipped around, acting on instinct and shoving her pistol hard into his ribs. She was mildly satisfied to see him halt, panic in his eyes.

Sam narrowed her eyes, the blood was roaring in her ears, her heart almost bursting with anxiety and panic. She gritted her teeth and seethed at the tall stranger, "Tell me why I shouldn't just unload this gun right now." Sam dug the barrel in for good measure. "I want the truth, are you following me?"

Loki raised his hands in surrender, "Because there are a lot of people nearby," he cleared his throat. "I was curious about your skill with knives in the arena, and by chance I saw you enter your truck, and you're a _woman, _but I knew it was you from the attire and the cracked helmet, and it's a curious thing what you're doing," he rushed out, swallowing nervously, his voice rising in pitch.

Pausing for a moment, Sam put her gun away, never taking her eyes from him. "What would that be, observant stranger?" She was beginning to get a grip on her emotions.

"Well, my name is Luke," he exhaled, "You're clearly protecting someone, no one has a fake name and violet hair, and contact lenses that isn't trying to keep who they are and where they come from a secret. I don't care, I really don't. I just want to get out of the city, get my own car and be on my way. I can't fool you, so I'm bribing you with your secrets. You need money, your truck is filled with far more than it takes for you to survive, I'll not tell a soul who you really are. You can keep your secret in the arena, for whatever reason you need to keep it, and I can get out of the city," he hunched down, trying to get at eye level with her. "We both win," he pleaded, lowering his arms.

Sam ignored how nice his voice was, particularly when he was groveling. The accent was a beautiful torture, like a thimble of water in the desert. Her eyes softened involuntarily. She sighed, waving him to walk beside her, "You were a lawyer," she muttered.

"I'm sorry?" Loki was confused.

"Before the world went to shit, you were a lawyer, or you should have been."

"Oh no, darling," he flashed her a grin, "I was a prince."

* * *

It had taken more persuasion than Loki was accustomed to using on humans to stay with the violet haired woman. He could feel his magic thrumming in his veins and he felt so alive, like he could do anything. Well, until she pulled out her weapon on him, that is. He was convinced he could charm his way into her good graces, long enough to find out why her presence brought his magic forth. At the moment, he didn't care. He felt light, free. Even if it was only a small amount of what he was capable of, he'd take it and do everything he could to keep it coming.

He had gone with the woman back to her room, a small affair with an equally small bed. There was a small bathroom with cold water off to the side, and a window that showed the parking lot. Loki was seated on the floor, his back against the wall. Sam removed her contacts in the bathroom, and walked past him with her bag. She rolled out a grease spattered blanket on top of the bed and began meticulously cleaning each of the guns that she had used in the arena. Loki watched in silence, waiting for her to begin re-assembling the parts before speaking to her.

"I'm sorry, I never asked your name?" He prompted of the woman, as she stowed her bag on the table by the bed and sat gracelessly across from him on the floor in a similar fashion, her back against the bed. She stared at him, seeming to consider his question. Loki was surprised to see her eyes, they were his favourite shade of forest green, offset by her striking dark violet hair. He watched her remove her gloves, and she extended her left hand to shake his.

"I'm Sam," she shook with a grip, and Loki noticed the wide, diamond band on her third finger. Genuinely shocked, he quickly tried to cover his expression and failed, knowing that she had seen it.

"So," he recovered, "You made your name masculine to disguise that you're a woman in the arena?"

Sam chuckled, "No, my name's Samantha, but I prefer Sam. Samuel Yung…" her breath noticeably hitched in her throat, "Is the name I use to keep myself anonymous. I don't want these people to find me, I just want to be left alone."

'What kind of a man would allow his wife to live as she seemingly did?' Loki thought, 'A human one,' he all but growled in his head. Instead of airing that grievance, he asked, "I am curious to know, how were you not crushed by that Infected? And where did you learn to wield blades as you do?"

Sam laughed, opening a bottle of water and taking a deep drink before answering. "I use body armor, the plates cover my torso and back, but where the straps link up around my sides-" she gestured to her left side with a wave of her right hand, '-it's vulnerable. Same with my arms; the tops of my forearms are covered, but not the underneath, and not above my elbow. My entire pelvis is left exposed, as is the sides of my legs for the same reasons the sides of my ribs. I wear leather pants and a tunic to act as a cushion, and keep myself protected from cuts underneath the armor."

Loki furrowed his brows, "That sounds awfully heavy for someone as small as you are."

Sam snorted a laugh in response, "I'm really strong," she raised her left arm and flexed her bicep, "Small and mighty," she laughed again, drinking more water. "As for the knife throwing, I don't know. I was taught a long time ago how to work with knives as a hobby. It was...encouraged when the Infected started destroying things," at the memories of her husband teaching her to throw knives and darts for sport, she paused. Shaking it off, she kept speaking, "It's easier, I prefer fighting from a distance. I'm small, and I'm fast. I mean...you saw for yourself."

Loki nodded in response, contemplating. Moving on, he asked, "Why do you not want the safety of the city?"

"Why don't you?" She countered quickly.

Her question caught him off guard. Trying to stick with his original story, he replied in a soft voice, "I don't really know. We stayed away from the major cities like this, and the arena is one of the reasons why. What's happened to humanity, after all? You must sleep with one eye open in the walls of the cities, or one eye open for the Infected on the outside. Is it really any different? At least you can hear the Infected screaming when they come for you." It wasn't entirely a lie, he _had _avoided the major cities and the humans in general due their barbarous and traitorous behavior.

Sam stared at him. He had said everything she had felt, and expressed her reasons for not wanting her children to grow up in the walled cities. She suddenly felt very sad for judging this man before, he clearly wasn't going to last long on his own, and she stopped herself before she asked him to seek shelter with her and her family. He was a stranger, and for all she knew, he was looking for someplace just like hers to hold up in.

Rising from the floor, she pulled her pistol from her leg, and sat on the bed, leaning her head against the headboard and resting the weapon on her lap. "It's getting late," She pointed to Loki, "You. Sleep." She hunched her shoulders down, looking out of the window at her truck, readjusting to find a comfortable slouch that didn't hurt her ribs, shoulder or hip.

"You're not going to sleep?" Loki asked her, surprised.

"It's not my first all-nighter, I'm not sleeping in a strange room with a strange…Luke." She smiled, though it didn't reach her eyes, and clicked off the lamp on the bedside table.

Loki stretched out on the floor, not needing sleep at all, but feigning sleep anyway. Hours passed, and he eventually heard her breathing even out. Raising his head, he made sure Sam was out before he sat up. He cast a simple illumination spell, gently tossing the green orb of light back and forth between his palms. He felt like a child again, in awe of his basic skills. Loki practiced moving the orb throughout the dingy, dark room. He held it suspended above Sam's face, then her shoulder. He noticed her bruising for the first time, it was ugly and he remembered the crunching sound of her ribs in the arena. Whatever she was fighting so desperately to keep from the rest of her world, it had to be important.

He examined her face; it was an oval shape, a smattering of freckles across the bridge of her small, slightly crooked nose extended to dust both of her cheeks. She had a pink cupid's bow mouth, tanned skin. Her arms were well muscled, from what he could see, her shoulders rounded. She had rough hands, calloused with short fingernails. Sam was short, even by Midguardian standards. Her body didn't look like it'd borne any children. She didn't look much older than a Midguardian teenager in her sleep, but she carried herself with the candor of a woman in her twilight. She was overall an average human, from what he could tell.

Loki found himself questioning again, 'Why her?'

The sky was beginning to lighten, and Loki extinguished his ball of light. He watched with an amused grin as Sam woke with a start, she flinched once she realized she'd nodded off, clutching her pistol and looked straight to Loki.

"Quite the 'all-nighter,' eh?" He teased, grinning and standing and stretching. Sam said not a word in response, standing and gathering her belongings. Strapping her guns back in place, she left her knives in the knapsack; driving around wasn't the time to throw knives she wouldn't be able to retrieve if she came upon a hoard she couldn't avoid. She pulled dark sunglasses over her eyes, and adjusted her braid. She had a crick in her neck from sleeping hunched over, but it was nothing compared to her ribs.

They silently climbed into the truck, Sam adjusting mirrors, and Loki fastening the ridiculous human harness around his torso. It was a tight fit with the coolers and their bags, but Loki didn't complain.

"They open the gates to let people in and out of the city through a tunnel in about ten minutes. The tunnel runs about six miles, and then we'll be on the open road," Sam informed him, backing out of the parking space.

"And then what?" Loki asked, scanning the horizon.

"Then you're on your own," she replied, looking over her sunglasses at him for a moment before turning her eyes to the road.

'That's what you think,' Loki thought to himself.

* * *

**AN: I'm new to the whole being a writer on fanfiction thing, so forgive my lack of response to the reviews/pm's. Still learning how to navigate the page, but I'm getting there! My chapters are getting longer...idk if I should apologize for that or not. :)**


	5. Chapter Four

_Steps I take in your footsteps aren't getting me closer to what is left, of the dreams of what I once claimed to know. Within my bones this resonates, boiling blood will circulate. Could you tell me again what you did this for? I've no more blood to bleed, cause my heart has been draining into the sea._

* * *

_"In which direction are you heading?" Loki had asked her as he climbed into the station wagon she'd helped him find and hot wire._

_"Northwest," Sam easily lied, smiling briefly as she climbed back into her truck. "Hey Luke? Take care of yourself, okay?" She rolled up her window and took off before she changed her mind, making sure he wasn't in her rearview mirror when she turned the truck east and headed for home. _

The guilty pang in her gut at leaving him alone to surely die had gnawed at her the entire ten-hour drive. He didn't look like he had a gun on him, and seemed to have limited survival skills outside of outrunning the Infected in a vehicle. It was easy to ignore with her body aching. Her head itched, her ribs throbbed, her shoulders ached, and her right hip was in and out. She had stopped off at a few pharmacies to raid for strong pain killers, and had lucked out at one. At the moment, home meant a shower, and pain killers. She pressed her foot harder on the gas. It had been an uneventful trip, she'd outrun any Infected she'd seen on the way and hadn't hit any packs of them. Most travelers stayed on the main protected roads between the major cities, and where she lived was remote with no major cities around for at least a day's drive. She liked it that way. Sam watched the sun kiss the earth goodnight, and the sky began to change into its brilliant colours of orange and grey dusk.

Coming up to the storage facility, she noticed the embers outside of the walls; the boys must have cleared the Infected bodies out and burned them while she was gone. That made her blood boil, 'They shouldn't have been out here,' her brain screamed. It was completely quiet, from what she could see. The small facility was on the outskirts of town, and walled with brick walls and an iron gate. Before life went to shit, the storage facility was primarily used for vehicle storage, the units were large and equipped for electricity. It was perfect for storing their things. She unlocked the gate, drove through and pulled it closed and locked it behind her. She relaxed a bit, feeling a little secure. Sam knelt and unlocked the padlock on the unit for her truck, pulled the metal latch from the concrete groove that held it in place, drove her truck straight in and lowered the ramp for her bike. She opened the unit beside it, and gently walked her bike into it, setting it upright with the other bikes and ATV's they had acquired over the years. She'd have to come back another time and make the repairs on it, right now she had to get the goods loaded into the carts in the sewer and make the trek home. Locking up the unit, she removed the ramp from her truck, pulled a set of straps from a bench inside and walked a few yards beyond the unit. There was the manhole cover that she used to get to and from home without having to cross the Infected surrounding the tower. Looping the straps through the top of the cover, she wrapped them around her forearms and leaned back, planting her feet and flexing her leg muscles to brace herself. She pulled hard.

Sam's right shoulder made a sickening crunch and she made an unintelligible noise of pain as she dropped to one knee. The cover hadn't moved, but her shoulder seemed to be dislocated. Releasing the straps, she moved to the unit and sat on the bench inside, gritting her teeth, and resting her left elbow on her knee, her head in her hand. She wanted to cry, or scream. She was grimy, she was injured, she was exhausted. 'Maybe Brad's right,' she thought, biting back tears, 'Maybe I can't do this on my own, anymore.' Sucking in a few deep breaths, she pushed her panic and her woe down, stood and prepared to try to adjust her shoulder against the side of the unit.

A sudden, familiar, high pitched, garbled wail pierced the silence and she jerked her head up to see three Infected running towards her from the other side of the facility. Without thinking, she quickly reached up and yanked the storage unit closed in front of her with her left hand, plunging herself into darkness and locking her inside with the sound of the metal latch clanking into place in the concrete outside. Navigating the unit in the dark, she grabbed a chem-light from the basket on the shelf and popped it quickly, putting it between her teeth. She grabbed her knapsack with her ammo and her knives from the truck, slung it over her left shoulder and started climbing the iron ladder on the wall of the unit to the hatch in the roof. Halfway up, she heard the Infected slam into the metal door, denting it. She didn't look back, but reached the top and looped her right arm and left leg through the ladder to keep herself steady while she opened the hatch with her left. Her right shoulder screamed in pain, and she flung the hatch open and climbed onto the roof, scrambling to shut it and stand.

'There,' she thought, as she scanned the facility, her eyes landed on the entry point of the Infected. It was on the south wall, and had to have been breached at some point after the boys and she had left. It looked to be a foot and a half wide break in the brick opening, just enough for them to squeeze through.

"Fuck!" she swore as she turned her attention to the three Infected that were beating themselves against the unit, trying to reach her. She pulled her SiG from her left thigh and aimed, she fired several shots and needed to reload, not killing off and barely hitting any of them. She cursed her crappy left-handed aim as she reloaded, when there was suddenly a loud banging and yelling coming from the front gate.

"Sam!" came a recently familiar voice. In disbelief, she whirled around to see Loki, rattling the gate to get the Infected's attention. She stared slack-jawed at him, at a loss for words. "Sam! Do you have the key?" Sam nodded dumbly. "Can you walk the roofs and toss me the key? You're hurt, let me get in and I can help you!" It took Sam a moment to process, but before she could talk herself out of it, she held her right arm against her chest and started running, leaping from roof top to roof top of the units; being spaced only a few feet apart, it wasn't difficult. She reached the unit by the gate in seconds, and tossed him her key ring over it, she began firing into the Infected to distract them from the gate.

"Which key?!" He yelled as he fumbled through the ring, trying key after key.

"The one with the red guard," Sam grunted, slamming another clip into her pistol with her thigh. 'That'll bruise,' she grimaced at the self-inflicted charlie-horse on her left leg. Loki finally found the right key, opened the gate with a screech and sprinted into his car, effectively leading out the three Infected. He stopped several yards from the gate, and got out, standing still while they raced towards him.

"Luke! Luke, what are you doing?!" Sam screamed, sure he was about to meet his end in front of her. She was helpless on the rooftop, and the Infected were absolutely frothing with their hunger for destruction. She watched him quickly reach into the car, into his bag, and pulling two large hunting knives from them, he met the trio halfway. Dodging, and slicing and whirling, thrusting and stabbing; Sam watched as he quickly dispatched of the Infected. It looked like a dance. He got back into his car, and drove through the gates, stopping to lock them behind him, he looked up at her.

She stammered, "H-How…Wha-…I-…," Sam was dumbfounded, her brain officially overloaded.

"Sam," he calmly spoke to her, as if she were a wild animal he was talking down, his hands raised open palm to her, "Sam, can you sit on the edge of the roof? If you can scoot off, I'll catch you." Sam stared at him, and after processing what he had asked of her, she clamped her mouth shut and raised an eyebrow. "It's not far," he smirked at her. Considering her other options, which were limited with her shoulder, she complied. "There's a girl," Loki encouraged as she slid off the edge. His catch was gentler than she anticipated, and he set her equally as gently down on her feet. "I drove east. I was about a mile from here to stretch my legs and consider stopping for the night at the oncoming town when I heard the gunshots. Please don't hate me for this, but…you look just awful, darling."

Sam actually laughed, and then cried out from her ribs hurting. She started to double over, when Loki put his arm around her to steady her. She braced against him with her left arm, and pushed him away. "No," she gasped out, "No time to stop, yet. There's a breach in the wall. We have to seal it up." Loki silently followed as she hobbled to another unit further down from the one with her truck in it.

"I'm sorry, did you just say, 'we?' Are you asking me for help?" Loki questioned.

Sam paused, "Yeah, I guess I am," she muttered.

Loki teased her, "Samantha the invincible, asking for help." Loki casually pulled out his mussed hair, and re-tied it with the elastic.

"Shut-up, or I'll shoot you and figure this shit out another way," she leaned down to unlock the padlock. Loki just grinned in reply. Standing, she asked, "Look, do you know how to set a busted shoulder? I can't work like this," she indicated her right arm. Loki reached out and swiftly reset her shoulder faster than she could blink. Registering the pain, and stumbling forward, she cried out after the fact. "OW! You son of a bitch!" She ground her teeth, raised her right arm to work it out, and leaned against the inside wall of the unit. Blinking back the pain, she quietly thanked him and tossed him a pair of heavy-duty work gloves. They worked quickly and in silence, she liked that. Loki hauled most of the sandbags with a wheel barrow, and she strung the barbed wire on the outside while he kept his eyes on the terrain. It was dark, pitch black save for the light from the moon and their chem-lights.

"Sam? Can I ask, why do you have these…these things?" Loki gestured to the sandbags and the wire.

"I don't know," she honestly replied. "My husband, he was always collecting stuff, and filling these units. The last couple of years, I've seen why. I've had to unlock and use a lot of the stuff that's in here. He prepared a lot of things that I never would have thought about needing, these sandbags and this barbed wire being the prime example." She stood and removed her gloves, tossing them into the wheel barrow. They walked around the facility back to the entrance, Sam unlocked the gate, and she made a decision.

"Look, Luke, I need to talk to you. I'm not on my own, you were right. I have a family, they're six miles from here. I'm the one that sustains us on supplies, like what I gathered in Atlanta, but…" she paused, her shoulders slumping, "I need help." Sam bit down hard on her lower lip to keep from crying. "I can't do this on my own, not today, and maybe not anymore. I don't want to risk my family coming out here, and I can offer you a place to stay. It's safe. If you don't want to, that's fine, and I can let you drive off, now. I'll call my kids out here, and they can help me unload the truck."

Loki seemed to consider her offer for a moment. "You have children?" Loki's eyes suddenly widened in surprise.

"I have three; they're twenty, sixteen, and twelve, and they're everything to me," her voice was thick with emotion. Sam's eyes flashed, "If you even think-" she started to threaten.

"I accept," he said softly. Sam was silent. "I accept your offer. After all, it beats living in a car," he made a poor stab at humor.

Sam shut the gate behind them, locking them into the facility together.

* * *

**AN: I had to cut this short, it was the size of two chapters. BONUS, the next chapter is already done! :)**

**Took forever to crank this out, family vacation, as well as classes starting up. I was also distracted for an entire day writing my Ozil fic (that I'm shamelessly plugging) that you can find on my profile page, titled Reroute. I'll be working on them both, as it's a nice reprieve from the heaviness of this piece.**

**I got my very first follow, and it's so exciting. Thank you so much for reviewing, following, and PMing me about this story. It's ridiculous how giddy it makes me**.


	6. Chapter Five

_Do you feel this underlying sense of urgency? Or are you as blind as me? I hit the ground and I'm still running, but I need a place to stay tonight. Swear I'll be gone in the morning, I just need somewhere warm to close my eyes._

* * *

Loki placed the last of the duffel bags down the hole in the concrete into Sam's waiting cart. Ascending the ladder as she closed up the storage unit, reaching into the bag at her feet to retrieve a long rectangular object with buttons on it. She punched the buttons, and raised it to her ear, pausing.

"Mike?" He watched her blink back tears, he assumed of relief. "Hey, yeah…I'm sorry. There was a breach at the unit…it's okay, now…no, don't send Lee, I'm fine. Listen, I'm about to drop into the tunnel, I'm on my way home, but I'm not alone…it's a long story," she glanced at Loki as she listened. "No, it's okay, I'll talk to him when I get home. Hey…I love you. I'll see you in a couple of hours." With that she pressed another button and placed it back into her bag. Loki took it before she could put it over her shoulder, carrying his bag as well.

"No complaints," he stopped her, "Lead the way." She bristled, but walked past him to the hole. She handed him the straps for the cover, and climbed down the ladder silently. Loki pretended to struggle with its weight, and slid the cover over his head, it loudly clanged into place. Sam had broken more chem-lights below, and was illuminated in an eery green and blue filter from them. Loki placed his hands on the laden cart, and followed her in silence, she pushing her own cart ahead.

The old sewer tunnels were brick and arched, with a path between the two drain flows. Loki had to slightly hunch over his cart to be able to walk at a decent pace. They walked the path, it was just wide enough for their carts. Sam was clearly exhausted, and Loki wondered briefly how she hadn't collapsed from exhaustion. He could see it in her face, the pain she felt when she spoke of her children; she felt she was failing them by needing help. 'Children,' he thought for the dozenth time. He'd missed the mark on that one. He examined her with a clinical eye over his cart. Thin frame, slender hips, she was also older than he thought.

"Sam?" He wondered aloud, "How on earth have you managed loads like this on your own?" He heard her snort an unfeminine laugh that caught him off guard before she responded.

"I made a lot of trips. Once I'm inside the storage facility, I can make trips with the carts. It takes about a day of walking these tunnels, but it's worth it. I only have to do this once every four to six months or so, depending on how fast we go through the food. In the summer, it lasts longer."

"And how much longer of a walk do we have?"

Sam stopped pushing her cart, hunching over to catch her breath. Loki could see how drawn her face was, even in the dim light. He stayed where he was as she retrieved a water bottle and took a long pull. She had a smudge of dirt beneath her right eye, across her cheek bone. Loki noticed she was still favoring her right shoulder considerably, and briefly wondered if she required a sling. Her right side had been battered the day before, her shirt was dingy and clung to her body with sweat. She carried herself as one with weighted shoulders, but she was determined. Sam reminded Loki briefly of Frigga, with her fire and her love of her children, her tenacity. Loki didn't admire the little violet haired human, after all, she was only human. However; she had earned an iota of his respect, which he didn't freely give.

"It's not far from here," she wiped her mouth with her dirty left forearm and gestured to the wall to the right with a chem-light, "See the markings?" Loki followed the light and saw a black spray painted '10' on the wall. She recapped her bottle, "The manhole cover in the parking garage of the tower is ten ladders from here. We marked the walls at first to make sure we didn't get lost and come up in some hive of Infected in the city. That wouldn't be pleasant," she started to chuckle, but then stopped herself and readjusted her fingerless gloves. She turned, placing her hands on her cart, stepped forward two paces and began to sway.

Loki leapt over his cart and caught Sam by her left arm before she teetered off the walkway into the waters to her right. He steadied her by firmly holding her in place next to him, her arm draped around his neck. "Easy, there, I've got you," he told her. Sam's eyes swam in her head, but she pressed forward. Loki allowed her to walk, her hand on her cart, but he used his magic to push and pull them.

"I just need to get the stuff home…I can rest when I'm home," he heard her murmur, to herself it seemed. She raised her head and her eyes landed on Loki's face, "You're like a bad penny, you just keep turning up, 'cept when you do, it's lucky for me," she whispered. "Thank you," Loki saw genuine gratitude in her eyes. Her voice was noticeably strained. If he didn't know any better, Loki would have thought that the little human looked defeated, on the brink of giving up.

Seeming to catch her second wind, Sam disengaged from Loki suddenly, standing on her own and leaning against the cart in front of her. She stopped walking, indicating a walkway to the left that lead to a ladder on the wall. It wasn't the first he'd seen, but he assumed this was their stop. Loki closed the gap between him and the ladder in two long strides, climbing it quickly and pressing his hands against the manhole cover, knowing that she wouldn't last much longer. Not even bothering to pretend it was difficult this time, he doubted she'd notice, anyway, he started to move it. Before he could, the cover was ripped away from the top end. Loki looked up, surprised. He found himself face to face with a broad shouldered youth with light hair and eyes the colour of sea glass. His pale complexion was flushed, his arms bulging from the weight of the discarded cover. He looked past Loki into the darkness, his right fist cocked back and aimed at Loki's head for good measure, suspicion clear on his face.

"Mom?!" he called out. Loki dropped down to the waiting Sam below, leaning on the ladder. He encircled her waist and lifted her up the ladder, hoisting her into her son's waiting arms. He pulled her out quickly, practically leaping from the hole in the concrete that Loki emerged from, staring up at him. He wasn't alone; a taller, slightly older young man with dark features and glasses stood slightly behind him, and a much older dark-skinned man with brown curly hair stood in front of them. The older man had a weapon leveled at Loki's chest. There was a glint on the older man's left hand, a wedding ring.

"And just who the fuck are you?" The eldest of the three calmly asked him, the weapon steady.

This not being the first time Loki had dealt with paranoid humans in his trek across the globe, he knew how to mollify the situation. He smiled, raising his hands palm up to shoulder level. "My name is Luke. I mean you and your family no harm." He was met with clinical silence. Sam swayed in her son's grasp, and stood, holding his arm with her left hand. "Sam?" He raised his eyebrows, nodding his head to indicate the man with the gun.

"Guys, really, it's cool. I brought him. He's saved my skin, and I wouldn't have been able to get down here without him," still, silence. With a fierceness Loki didn't realize she could posses in her weakened state, she sharply called out to the man with the gun, "Bradley!"

Bradley held the weapon at Loki's chest level a beat longer than was required. Never removing his eyes from Loki, he lowered his gun and called out, "Mike, Lee, unload. I'll take your mom upstairs. You stay in my sight at all times, Luke." The name was uttered with disdain.

The boys moved past him and down into the tunnel. Loki lowered his hands, but extended his right in greeting and stepped a pace forward. With steely, judgement filled eyes, and a cold voice he said, "You must be the husband Sam's mentioned." Bradley stepped forward with a limp that Loki was surprised to see, and clasped hands with him.

"No, I'm a family friend."

Sam balked and began to laugh, suddenly doubling over at the pain in her ribs and crying out, her breathing becoming erratic. Bradley rushed to her aid, still not taking his eyes from Loki.

"I'm okay," she rasped.

"She's not," Loki said. "Her right shoulder is dislocated; her entire right side has taken a beating, from shoulder to hip. She's exhausted, and needs medical attention and rest." When Sam gave him a murderous glare, he smiled at her and continued, wrinkling his nose, "And a bath." With a withering look that bordered on a smile, Sam jokingly placed her left hand on one of her guns.

Placing his hands in his pockets and rocking back on his heels, Loki laughed. "I'm sorry, darling, but it's true. You're positively ripe, and don't threaten me with that, we both know the walls would handle more damage from your left hand than I would." Sam's response was to lean her back against the grey parking garage wall, she moved to slide down and sit. Loki was quickly at her left side, his arm across her back and under her right arm. "No, love, not when you're this close. Come on," he lifted her gently. Bradley limped forward, starting to raise his weapon and opening his mouth to give warning. Before he could, Loki dismissed him, "Oh, put it away. Like you could do her any good, you can scarcely carry yourself." Loki moved forward with her as her sons began emerging with the supplies. "She's asked me for help, and I've given my word. Show me where to take her, then you can deal with me," Loki snapped at him.

Bradley grabbed a duffel, slung it and his weapon over his shoulder. He stooped and pulled a valve on each of the coolers, draining water from them. Glaring at Loki, he plugged one liquid-drained cooler back up, lifted it, and motioned to a grey metal door several yards to the right. Loki allowed him to lead the way, bracing Sam as she walked. They went up six flights of stairs in silence, having to more carry Sam than supply a leaning post for her as the stairs wore on her injured hip. Loki noticed that the access doors were welded shut. At the sixth floor, they went through the door, and crossed a a grey concrete floor to a chrome elevator. The floor to ceiling windows shuttered, the small space dark and clean.

"Service elevators," Sam explained, moving to stand on her own. When Loki released her and didn't respond, she continued. "We cut the cables on the building's main elevators almost ten years ago, when it all started. Sealed off the doors so you can only access the building from the parking garage. The entryways to the garage are blocked off, too. The Infected don't really go pushing buttons, but as a precaution we sealed the elevator doors up to this floor, filled the shaft with whatever we could to keep people out. Metal, barbed wire, sandbags, whatever. The elevator won't go below floor six, and even if someone tried, it wouldn't be able to squash the debris." Sam yawned, hobbling through the elevator doors. "Once we're all up, we cut the power to the elevator, anyway, and use the stairwell to get between the two floors we use. The only time the elevator is used is when we haul gear up and down on my trips. All of the other floors' doors are welded, too, and the stairwells are filled with the same debris we packed into the elevator, so there's no access to the penthouse without the elevator."

"And what keeps the outside world from finding you? Other survivors? Certainly a functioning building as this draws attention?" Loki questioned, peering down at her. The elevator stopped, the doors whooshing open into the penthouse. Loki surveyed the dark polished floors, the U-shaped couch recessed into the floor with the polished metal accents and large windows. It was a completely different world from the one he had seen; clean, warm, and inviting. In answer to his question, Sam gestured to the sparkling windows, framed with heavy grey drapes, that viewed the rest of the small dark city and night sky.

"The city is still overrun with the Infected," she smirked.

Loki look to Sam, her violet hair frizzing out of it's disheveled braid, her green eyes dull with dark rings beneath them. Her face was drawn and a sickly colour. He nodded his appreciation to her. "You're hiding in plain sight," he acknowledged. 'How clever,' he thought, his respect for her notching up a bit, dangerously close to admiration. This set-up took real thought and planning, and reminded him of similar places he once held in Asgard that were his and his alone.

Bradley dropped the cooler with a loud and echoing thud. He pointed to Loki and gestured to a hallway, "You, I want you in that room while I look after Sam. She may trust you, but I don't. I'm locking you in there and if you even think about coming out before I come to get you, Lee's gonna blow your head off." On cue, the sons emerged from the elevator with the rest of the goods. Lee was the fairer of the two, more muscular, shorter and younger. He took the proffered shotgun from Bradley, and Loki complied, allowing them to lead him down the hallway to the first door on the right.

"Brad!" Sam began to protest, "Luke, I'm sorry-"

"It's alright, Sam. Tend to yourself, I could use a good sit," he smiled to her reassuringly, placing his hand on the knob. Sam huffed in response, she paused at his back, and placed a hand between his shoulder-blades, "Luke, thank you," and she shuffled two doors down on the right of the hallway.

Loki entered the room and closed the door behind him. It looked like what used to be an office, an old desk with an older computer covered in dust sitting atop it was in the center of the carpeted room. There was a clearly unused twin sized bed in the right corner, a closet to the left. The wall of windows was shuttered, and he moved towards them, opening them. He found a sliding glass door behind them, unlatched it and stepped out onto a small stone balcony that extended to a set of closed french doors on the left. 'They didn't plan this very well,' he thought with a chuckle, moving to inspect a thick rope slung over the edge.

He heard it before he saw her, there was a scrabbling sound beneath the balcony, grunts of effort. Loki casually leaned against the wall between the two doors, waiting for the intruder to climb over the railing. A young woman's head appeared, and when her eyes landed on Loki, she leapt over the ledge, drew a grimy twelve inch blade from her back and had it pressed to Loki's abdomen in seconds. She stared him down with panicked warm brown eyes. She had long curly brown hair that was tied behind her head, she wore black clothes and gloves, and rugged boots. She was filthy, and Loki thought he smelled blood. Standing no taller than four and a half feet, Loki cocked his head to the side and peered down at her, amused.

"And just who might you be, little one?"

A surprisingly strong voice responded, "My name's Harper, and I live here. Who the fuck are you?"

* * *

**AN: So happy to introduce Harper! There's a reason why she 'keeps to herself' and the family doesn't really see her much...and it isn't pre-teen angst.**

**Well...maybe a little angst. She's a pretty angry kid.**

**Thanks for reading, loves. :)**


	7. Chapter Six

_We are the long forgotten sons, and daughters that don't belong to anyone. We are alone, under this sun. We work to fix the work that you've undone._

* * *

Loki had little time to stay amused at the child before he heard the door to Sam's room open, and Brad's footfalls in the hall.

"Ah, love, you might want to put your toys away before your mother sees you out with them," he had responded to her, yanking her blade from her with ease and tossing it to the other side of the balcony, it clattered against the rail. As she dove for it, he quickly stepped back into the room, closing the door and righting the shutters and standing at the desk, right as Brad opened the door. The man held disapproval in his eyes, his face set in a dissatisfied frown.

"Luke," he nodded his head to Loki, "Sam seems to think you aren't a threat, she's told me how you've helped her out. Thank you. She's never brought anyone home before -"

Loki cut him off, "She's never needed to," there was a double meaning in his words.

Brad sighed out through his nose, gestured to two chairs with a table between them on the same wall as the door, and the men sat. "What happened in the arena? She's not talking," Brad asked.

"One of them charged her at the end, knocked her down. She'd have been pulverized, had it not been for that armor she wore." Loki didn't mince words, and he watched Brad's face lose a bit of colour, his fists tighten at his sides. He was glad to see it, still holding it against the man to send a woman to do such things, despite his injury. Where was her husband, anyway? "She would have died at the storage facility had I not found her there. They would have made it to her eventually, she could barely stand on her own."

Brad held up his hand, "I got it. Look…I don't know what to do, here. I owe you, we all do, but we can't be too careful. I want your weapons. All of them, it's the only way I'll be able to sleep with a stranger in my house." Loki raised a brow, "No offense," Brad amended. "It's just until I can trust you, okay? Can you at least do that for me?"

Without a word, Loki rose and picked up his bag, handing it to Brad. He watched the man retrieve five large knives, root around for a minute, and hand it back to him.

"That's it?" He questioned.

Smirking, Loki took his bag back and said, "Well, as you can see, Sam is also saving me."

Brad stood, one hand on the back of his neck, "Yeah. About that, I'm sorry about your friends. She told me what happened." He nodded to the bed, "You can crash there. We'll figure things out in a little while, but we have a lot of work to do. Sam can't really do much, she's drugged up pretty good, and we have a lot of food to store. Come on, I'll show you around, you can pick up the slack."

Loki looked down at the man, stopping him. "Bradley, yes? Can I ask, where is her husband?"

Eyes widening, Brad opened his mouth and closed it again, before cautiously asking, "What has she told you?"

"Well, nothing. She didn't even tell me of her family until we were at the unit and I had agreed to come with her. Then she threatened me, then you threatened me, and now here we are. I saw her ring."

"Sounds like Sam," Brad mused. "He's dead, it happened a couple of years ago. It's not my place to tell you anything else, now come on."

Loki kept his face impassive and followed Brad. He was shown the layout, the garden on the roof, and the two large chest freezers in the pantry off of the kitchen. He helped portion out food, rotate goods, and clean supplies. Sam's sons were just as cautious, if not downright awkward, around him. Harper stayed in her room or in the garden, and no one mentioned her to him.

He kept that to himself, and didn't see Sam for three days. He occupied his time in the home by observing her family, helping when he could, practicing his magic when he was alone. Loki seemed to be getting stronger, and was pleased with it. Sam had three children; Michael was the oldest, Lee the middle, and Harper the youngest. They were all battle worn, and independent. Michael was the most intelligent of the three, quiet, bookish, always tinkering to improve the quality of life of his family in the tower. Tall and thin, he was the younger male version of Sam; except for his eyes, they were warm and brown where hers were bright and green. Lee reminded him of Thor, all brawn and action, golden and warm. He was the muscle of the family, lifting and moving heavy loads and objects, and his blue-green eyes were kind. Sam's youngest child, Harper, reminded him of himself as a child; tortured, secretive, not quite fitting in with the rest of her family. Her skin tone was distinctly different from her brothers, though, her eyes naturally more narrow. Both of the young men favoured their mother, while Harper looked nothing like them.

It was on his fourth day there, in the morning, that Sam caught him by surprise. Loki was on the balcony off the kitchen, awake before the rest of the home, and he had been trying to teleport to the roof. His ears had just started to buzz and he had shifted into transparency when he heard the click of the lock on the sliding glass door. Surprised, he landed with a solid thump into one of the patio chairs, the wind knocked out of him. He watched as Sam stepped outside into the grey dawn morning, wrapped in a short fluffy light grey robe that stopped just above her knees. She carried a steaming cup, her hair was loose down her back and a surprisingly rich shade of brown with silvery strands peppered throughout. Her cheeks were flushed, her green eyes bright; she looked a different woman entirely from the violet-haired, soldierly woman that he had met.

"Oh," she started, her eyes landing on Loki to her right and widening in surprise, "I didn't know anyone else was up. Do you mind if I join you?"

Loki smiled a soft smile to her, hoping it came across as inviting, "Of course, it's your home." He gestured to the chair next to him. Sam took her hand from the door, and shuffled over, her bare feet soundless on the concrete. "How are you feeling?"

Sam eased into the chair gently, breathing in the morning air deeply before responding. She wrinkled her nose, stretching her left arm and her legs out, cradling her mug to her chest with her right arm, "Sore. It still hurts to breathe, but it's good to stretch my lung out." She sipped her coffee, curling her legs next to her. When Loki gave her a blank look in reply, she explained, "One of my ribs almost cracked completely. It's putting pressure on my lung. All of my drugged-up rest has really helped, but I can't lay in bed for weeks at a time. I'm going crazy."

"I've seen everyone keep busy," Loki remarked, watching Sam close her eyes and lean her head back, the sun on her. He looked at her legs, seeing the dark purple and blue bruising peeking out on her thigh from beneath her robe. He couldn't see the rest of her, but could only imagine the damage to her shoulders, her side. The fingertips on her hand that he saw beneath the large fluffy sleeve of her robe rested lightly on her ankle. His prior assessment of Harper not looking like her mother changed, she had her mother's hair, perhaps a shade or two darker, but the texture and fullness was the same.

"What about you?" Sam asked him, her eyes still closed. "What are you doing to keep yourself busy?"

"Your family is a well oiled machine, I'm afraid even my offers of assistance are declined to their productivity."

"Oh, that's about to change, mister," Sam laughed softly, opening her eyes and taking a long drink from her cup. "You have to pull your weight around here if you plan to stick around." She suddenly looked unsure, furrowing her brow. "You do plan to stick around, right? I mean, we never really put a timeline on this or…shit." She looked away, sitting up straighter and chewing her bottom lip as she thought. She placed her coffee cup between both hands in her lap. "Hey, remind me not to invite random strange men into my home when I'm half dead and completely unaware of the terms of said invitations, ok?"

"Sam?" Loki asked her, finding himself suddenly amused at her uncertainty, her rambling. "There's no place I'd rather be."

She raised her coffee and met his gaze over her the cup. "Really?"

"Truly. You have hot showers and beds with clean linens. Why would I ever leave?" Sam snorted into her cup, and Loki was surprised that the sound felt so warm. His years wandering must have isolated him more than he realized.

The glass door slid open, and Bradley stood in the doorway, watching them warily for a moment before Sam cleared her throat. "Sam, we need to talk," and he went back inside, leaving the door wide open as a clear invitation that the conversation needed to happen now.

"Does he never smile?" Loki asked, as Sam stood.

"He has his reasons," she defended him weakly, "We all cope in different ways."

"Yes, you all with your secrets," Loki looked at the ring on her left hand pointedly.

Sam squared her shoulders, a small bounce in her step, a sparkle in her eye. "Hey, I'd apologize, but you're full of just as much, if not more shit than all of us combined. Mr. 'Oh, I'm so helpless in the big city and I'm totally faking a twisted ankle for pity points,'" she mocked him in a high-pitched voice, waving her hands in the air for dramatics. She tilted her head to the side, suddenly serious. "Look, I don't know if I buy the story about you and your friends in a camper, but I do know when someone is keeping a major secret to survive, just like you did with me. How we survive is what makes us who we are, okay? You don't owe me anything, I owe you my life. I'd like to know your real story some day, and I'll tell you mine, but I'm not in a hurry. I'm not ready to talk, and clearly you aren't either." She turned to walk inside, leaving Loki open-mouthed that she had seen through him. "Oh yeah," she suddenly turned in the doorway, "Small favor? This is where I come every morning to wake up and drink my coffee. My space. Me time. Is that cool?"

Loki recovered his facial features. "Perfect," he managed, nodding to her in acknowledgement when she smiled a small smile in response before sliding the glass closed behind her.

Loki sat back in the chair with a huff, genuinely flabbergasted. He blinked, and found himself in the middle of the garden on the roof.

* * *

"Did you fuck him?"

Sam dropped her head into her hands, which was needed, because she was fairly certain that her eyes would have popped out of their sockets in sheer surprise at Brad's words had she not thrown her face into her hands. "Please tell me this is a nightmare," she groaned, pinching the bridge of her nose.

Bradley was waiting for her in her bedroom, the door open, and Sam had barely closed the door behind her when the words flew from his mouth. He was seated on the bench at the foot of her bed, arms crossed across his chest, leaning back against the foot of her bed. She crossed the space and sprawled out on her stomach on the bed, letting out a small, "ow," when she laid wrong and her shoulder protested. Her head was at the foot of the bed, her feet in the pillows. She stared into Brad's eyes.

"Oh my God, you are serious-"

"Hey, I just want to know-"

"Okay," Sam sat up on her left elbow, "First of all, it is not your business who, or what, or…ugh-"

"He wants something from you," Brad uncrossed his arms, turning to face her fully.

"So that's the first thing you think of?!" Sam screeched, burying her face in her blanket.

Brad kept on, "I can see it when he looks at you, he wants something from you, Sam-"

"Is that any different from you?" She jerked herself up to a sitting position at the head of the bed angrily. Her face flushed, she was angry.

When he didn't answer, she pressed on, "It's no different than any of you. You all rely on me, you all need something from me. Every single one of you. I can't believe you would even…" Sam trailed off, she was so upset she couldn't form words. She glanced at the photo on her nightstand of she and Samuel.

"You were laughing, Sam. Really laughing. I haven't heard you laugh like that since-"

"Stop," Sam choked out, closing her eyes.

"Sam, you're a widow, not a nun. It's okay-" he started gently.

"It's not, Brad. Okay? Can we please not do this? I didn't bring Luke here to…for…You know I'm still really mad at you, right?" Horrified to feel tears prickling her eyes, she took a deep breath and reigned herself in, her side screamed at her. "You son of a-"

"Oh, come on, Sam!" He stood. Sam stood as well, channeling her emotions into pure anger.

"He's MY son," she declared, "When I say-"

"He's not a little kid, he can do these things," Brad cut her off. "He can help you. I wouldn't have made the call if he couldn't have handled himself-"

Sam threw her hands up, "Oh, because you clearly have a track record for making wise choices with family safety, right?!" Sam suddenly shrunk back, her hands over her mouth, realizing what she had said. "Brad, I'm sorry. I didn't mean-"

"You did," Sam had never seen or heard him so wounded, "and a lot of things make sense, now." Brad turned to leave the room.

"Bradley, wait! Please," she rushed forward and held his arm with both hands.

He shrugged her off, "I can't do this, Sam."

"Fine," Sam's moment of feeling sorry for him suddenly gone, "Retreat when I don't pull any punches, right?"

Brad paused, his back to her still, and then stalked out the door.

* * *

Harper was so very screwed.

It had been four days since the stranger had caught her sneaking back into her room, and he hadn't said anything to anyone about it. She was on edge, worried, and suspicious. He was sleeping in the office right next to her room, they shared a balcony. She didn't like it. She liked her space. She was annoyed.

She was in the garden on the roof, sorting through the shed and scrubbing down the tools. Harper had spent the morning, and well into the afternoon pulling squash, tomatoes, potatoes, zucchini, okra, green beans, cucumbers, and corn from the vegetable side of the garden. She walked to the fruit side, to the Lychee tree her dad had planted. Reaching up on her tip toes, she grabbed a handful of them and sat, making them her lunch. She wiped her hands on her jeans absent mindedly, her green T-shirt already grimy.

_"Hey Little Girl! These are my favourite, and I can't wait for you to try them." Her daddy reached down and plucked a few of the red berries from the small tree, piercing the flesh and peeling it back, he handed Harper the white fleshy fruit._

_"What does it taste like?" She watched him bite into his, juice running down his chin._

_"Heaven," he smiled down at her. _

Harper smiled at the memory, she was five years old at the time. She bit into the lychee's soft flesh, and looked up to see Loki near the garden shed.

'I didn't hear the access door open,' she thought. 'Maybe if I sit very still, he won't see me, and he'll go away.'

As if on cue, Loki turned and looked directly at her. "You are so small, Harper, surely you don't scale up and down the length of the building? What's your secret?" He asked her in a conspiratorial tone.

Harper ignored him; his accent reminded her of her dad's accent, and it made her want to get her gardening tools dirty again, just not with dirt.

Loki began to walk across the garden to her. "Oh, come, now, I can be trusted with your secret."

Harper glared at him.

"You're an angry little thing, aren't you?" When she didn't answer, he continued. "I know a lot about secrets, Harper, and I know a lot about anger. If you'd ever like to talk to someone that isn't your family, aside from being the only option in your home, that is, I could help you."

"What makes you think I need any help?" She finally exploded, standing and stalking towards him. "I don't need anyone, I can make it fine."

Loki clasped his hands behind his back, his hair loose behind him. "I resented my family for a long time for the wrong reasons, too. I isolated myself. I hurt them, and I hurt myself, too. Then it was too late, I'm afraid I dug myself so far into a hole that I needed help to get out of it."

Harper stood frozen at Loki's words. She screamed out, "You don't know me!"

"I know that you're hurting," he spoke calmly, "and I know you're burying your pain. What you can't see is that it's burying you. My offer to help with your burden will always stand."

Loki bowed his head slightly, turned and walked to the steel door. Harper watched him go, shaking with rage. She counted to ten before she raced down the stairs and stormed her mother's bedroom.

Raging into the room, Harper stopped short when she saw her mom at the foot of her bed, holding a picture of her parents together. It was a black and white photo, except for the blue of their favourite sport's teams' jerseys that they both wore. They were looking at each other, her dad sticking his tongue out, her mom laughing with her nose crinkled. Harper saw her mom quickly swipe at her cheeks, erasing the tear marks.

"Hey honey, what's up?" she asked her, smiling through her glistening eyes.

Harper backed slowly towards the door, a big fake smile on her face. She watched her mom's face fall slightly, knowing she saw through Harper.

"It's nothing, Mom, never mind," she rushed out the door, closing it behind her. She quickly walked to her bedroom, closing the door and throwing herself across her purple satin comforter. She cried herself into a fitful sleep.

* * *

**AN: Not quite the happy little family, eh?**


	8. Chapter Seven

_Simply because you can breathe, doesn't mean you're alive, or that you really live. This life has taken it's toll, and she just doesn't know how much more she can give._

* * *

The first week that Loki had been in her life had been awkward; he always seemed to be nearby, and as a woman who was used to having her space, it was weird. The boys had seemed to adjust well, continuing on with their days and their chores as always, not avoiding Loki when he was around. Harper was her usual distant self, and Brad stayed away from Sam at all costs since their argument. She couldn't get him to talk to her, or open the door for her, he avoided her so much that she hadn't seen him in days. If the kids picked up on the tension, they were very good at hiding it from her. He hadn't been this upset with her since…well, she couldn't remember him ever being this upset with her, the roles were normally reversed with her being the angry one, and he the one that needed to wait her out. He always did.

It was early in the morning, and she had been in her room, assembling her gear to go to the storage unit. Wearing black leggings and a black camisole, her hair up in a tight ponytail, her bare feet padded across the room to her closet. She opened the door and stared at her reflection in the mirror hanging on it for awhile. Her shoulders were still a sickly mottled landscape of purples, blues, and greys, extending down her biceps and across her chest. Sam raised her shirt and gingerly ran a hand across her right rib cage, that was in a similar state of discoloration. Her right hip was near black, and she had tried very hard to conceal the limp she walked with that brought a modicum of relief. Brad had checked her thoroughly for broken bones, and she thanked everything that she had none. Sam had retrieved her duffel bag with her body armor and leather in it, and was unzipping it and laying out her things in a robotic fashion, when there was a soft knock at the door.

"It's open," she called out over her shoulder, continuing her inspection of her things. She heard the door open, and footfalls that came to a sudden stop. Hearing nothing, Sam glanced over her shoulder to see Lee behind her, his eyes wide, arms limp at his sides. "Hey, what's up?" she asked casually, folding up the now empty duffel bag and taking it back to her closet.

Lee said nothing, but walked out of her room.

Sam sighed and shut her door, knowing he was angry that she was going out without him again. She traded her pants for spandex shorts, and wriggled herself into her leather pants. After strapping her body armor pieces around her legs, she adjusted her ponytail and went back into her closet. Her black cargo pants had been ruined in the previous trip, and in lieu of them she chose her olive-green cargo pants over her armor plates. She had just finished strapping on the plates to her upper body when she heard raised voices in the living room. Furrowing her brow, Sam slipped a light grey long sleeved shirt with a wide neck over her head and opened the door. She could hear Brad arguing with Lee, Mike and Loki were at the end of the hall watching them from behind the corner.

"I wouldn't go in there," Mike warned her in a hushed tone. Loki looked down at her, seeming perfectly at ease with the yelling just beyond them…if even slightly amused.

"What the hell is going on in there?" She whispered back to her oldest son, giving Loki an apologetic glance before looking around the corner.

Mike opened his mouth to reply, but was cut off by Lee's booming voice carrying over to them. "IT WAS YOUR IDEA, you can't go back on it now!"

The two of them were standing near the kitchen, Lee had the SOCOM rifle slung over his shoulder, Brad was standing in front of him looking to block the door. Both of them were red faced, Lee looking angry, while Brad was pleading with him, looking defeated and tired.

"I will go with her myself, I can't condone you leaving like that again. It was stupid of me to allow you to go out last time. If something had happened-"

"BUT IT DIDN'T," Lee roared. "You don't 'condone' ANYTHING that I do, you aren't my dad! It's not like you could do anything to help her anyway, all you'll do is drag her down!"

Sam shoved past the two men gawking behind the corner of the room at the same time that Harper burst in from the kitchen, both of them speaking at the same time.

"Lee, that's enough!"

"Shut-up, Lee! Brad can do plenty!"

Loki and Michael had stepped from the hallway into the living room, looking awkward but not sure if they should leave.

Sam sighed, "Harper, go to your room, please," her tone leaving no room for argument from her daughter. Harper complied, but not before she roughly shoved past Lee. Sam turned and looked to Brad, seeing the red in his eyes, the bags beneath them. His skin was sallow, his hair a mess. Standing as close to him as she was, she could smell the tequila on his breath. If her family and a near stranger weren't surrounding them, Sam would have smacked him across the face and cried and hugged him all at once. Instead, she turned from Brad's sad eyes to face the blazing blues of her son. Her middle child.

"Lee-" she started off stern, but he cut her off. Lee was keyed up, and he was out of control.

"This is BULLSHIT, Mom," he fumed.

"I'm just going to the storage unit to make some repairs, Lee. I'll be fine."

"LOOK at your arms, Mom! I'm coming with you, and you can't stop me!" Lee towered over her.

Sam stared up at her son, he was only a head taller than she, for a solid half of a minute. Faster than any of the men in the room realized she could move, she took a single step forward and used her momentum to uppercut Lee in the jaw with the flat of her palm, knocking him straight back towards the kitchen. When he lost his footing, she advance on him. His gun was in her hands, and she had swept his feet from underneath him in one clean move. Lee looked up at her in surprise, Sam looked down at her son, holding the weapon behind her back and speaking calmly in a lethal voice that he had never heard from her before.

"If you ever so much as even think to speak to me in that way again, you remember this moment and that I could have done so much more than disarm and disable you. I am not helpless, Lee, and I'm still your mom. We will discuss this another time, but for now, you're grounded. Go to your room," she reached her hand down to help him up. Lee grasped her hand, mumbling an apology in a mortified tone before slinking to his room and closing the door.

* * *

Loki watched Sam walk to the kitchen island and sag against the bar, the rifle on the floor. Resting her elbows on the bar, her head in her hands, she let out a shaky breath and asked Michael to cut on the power to the elevator. Loki waited for Michael to leave the room before approaching her slowly, sitting on one of the bar stools at the end of the island.

"I could come with you, if you'd like. Not to say that you need assistance, but for your children's reassurances," when Sam didn't respond he pressed on, "They love you. Your last trip didn't return you to them in the best of conditions." Again, Sam said nothing. Just as he was turning away, Loki felt her hand grasp the sleeve of his shirt. When he looked back at her, she still had her face in her hand, but she nodded to show that she agreed with him. A single tear rolled down her cheek. He left her to collect herself.

Loki had observed humanity from afar for a long time, he hadn't tried to get involved, and had it not been for the return of his magic at her presence, Loki would never have been involved in Sam's life or her family's affairs. To keep his magic, he needed to stay near Sam. He might as well put out any fires while he was there, to make it more pleasant to endure being around humans so much.

At least, that's what he told himself as he knocked on Lee's door. The youth opened it, wiping his nose on his shirt sleeve, the evidence of his shame obvious.

"I've spoken to your mother, and I will go in your stead. I assure you that I will return her to you, you have my word that she will be safe with me."

Lee sniffed before answering, "Don't say that," he croaked.

"Oh?" Loki asked.

"Don't promise to come back. My dad promised me he would come back when I was a kid, and he didn't. My step-dad promised he'd come back, and he's dead. Brad almost didn't. Don't promise me," he croaked out.

Loki was momentarily stunned by the anguish in the boy's face. "She and I will both see you in a few hours," was all he could think to say as he backed out of the room, shutting the door softly.

He did the same at Brad's door, knocking and awaiting a reply. When none came, he tried the knob. Locked.

"Bradley-" the door opened a crack, and when nothing further happened, Loki pushed it open and stepped inside, closing it behind him. Brad had moved to a couch on the left side of the room. It was a simple room; red blankets on the queen sized unmade bed directly next to the door that Loki had come in, a dark leather and metal couch on the left wall, dresser and closet on the right, and directly across from the door was a wall of windows with dark heavy curtains pulled. "I will accompany Sam, you needn't worry."

"She doesn't have anything to give you, you should know that," Brad told him, picking up a half empty bottle of clear liquid from the floor and taking a swig.

Loki kept his face impassive, knowing of the argument that ensued between Bradley and Sam over a week ago. "I'm afraid I don't know what you're referring to."

"Whatever it is that you think she can give to you, she can't. She's tapped out," Brad reached over the arm of the sofa, grabbing a small tan bag, and tossed it across the room. Loki caught it at his chest with one arm. "It would be better for everyone if you just got back into that car, and left. Leave her alone," Brad took another drink.

Loki peered into the bag, seeing his blades. He looked up from the open bag, a questioning look on his face. "What has broken you?"

Brad barely reacted to the question, aside from sinking further into the couch and resting his head on the arm of it.

"Get the fuck out," was his calm reply, as his red eyes slid closed.

Loki stayed where he was for a beat, but left as he was asked to. Mike was walking past him to his own room, and the two exchanged nods before passing each other. He didn't bother with Harper's room, and went back towards the main living area of the penthouse. Sam was there, with a clean face, and had put on rugged boots that her pants were tucked into, various holsters with weapons strapped to her legs and arms. She was fastening her fingerless gloves around her wrists as he stepped into the room. They said nothing to one another, just exchanged nods, Loki putting the bag over his shoulder, and Sam walking to the elevator with a black bag on her own. They were silent the entire ride and walk to the garage.

There was an Infected waiting for them near the manhole cover, and Sam quickly dispensed of it with three knives - one to the throat, head and heart. She retrieved her blades in silence as Loki removed the metal cover and they slipped inside, still without conversing. It wasn't an awkward silence. After walking for an hour, Sam slowed her pace and they sat down to rest. Loki finally broke the silence as she pulled two water bottles from her bag, handing him one and unscrewing the cap on hers.

"How are you really?" He asked her, leaving no room in his tone for jokes.

"Dying," Sam chuckled a bit, "I'm still really sore, but I have things that need to be done. I'll be fine," she drank her water. "I'm sorry, about today. About the kids, and Brad…I should have warned you that we're not exactly the Partridge family." She recapped her water and stood.

"All family have their struggles, Sam. You're lucky that you have yours still…and that they love you." They continued on. "May I ask, about Bradley?"

Sam's footsteps faltered in front of him, but she kept walking. "What do you want to know?" she asked guardedly.

"What's happened to him? Please don't say that it's not your place to tell me, because I have grown very tired of hearing that."

Sam chuckled slightly, her shoulders hunching as she thought for the words.

"He…He's my family. He always has been, we've been close from the moment we met. Soul mates, ya know? He finally met someone right after I married, a woman like me that had baggage. He loved her completely. though, adopted her kids and everything. She had two beautiful little girls, blonde, fair, and innocent. When everything started, we evacuated our two families into one of the cities…they were smaller then, about a hundred or so of us. They weren't as safe or secure as they are now, and it was ugly. Do you remember how I said that how we survive is what makes us who we are?" She glanced over her shoulder. Loki nodded. "Well…the infection brought out the worst in our survival skills. People were killing other people for food, medicine, a pillow. It was terrible. We kept to ourselves, hid the kids from as much as we could. My husband and Brad always staying with our families while the other would leave for supplies. There was always a watch shift, to make sure no one broke in and stole anything, or did worse. There was a breach one night, the Infected stormed through, tearing people apart, infecting others. Someone made an emergency call, and helicopters started flying in, trying to get people out. My husband carried Harper in a carrier on his back loaded down with other supplies, she was four, Lee was eight, and Michael had just turned twelve. I'd been teaching them how to fire guns for protection, and it came in handy that night," she said bitterly, frowning at the memory.

Loki watched as she collected herself. She looked to the floor, then back up straight ahead. "They left us and the pack on top of the house that we had been living in, the men, promising to return with one of those helicopters. Brad's wife begged him not to go, but he promised her she would be safe. We were, it took what seemed like hours. The kids were all exhausted, and we were beginning to lose hope that they would return when there was a chopper overhead, it was them. They hovered over us, Brad at the controls, my husband loading the kids, Harper first. I still don't know where they came from, but there were four infected. I couldn't," her voice caught in her throat, "I wasn't fast enough. It all happened so fast. They tossed her and the girls from the roof like they were rag dolls. I was thrown down, Lee was the first to react, hitting two of them in two clean shots, my husband killed the other two. He loaded the boys up the rope ladder, and carried me up over his shoulder, Harper's pack on his back. It was all we had in the world, in that pack. I could see the rooftop flood with Infected below…it was a terrible night."

They had reached the ladder to the manhole cover at the storage unit. She stepped aside so Loki could remove the cover for her. They didn't speak again until they were standing on the pavement in the crisp morning air.

"He blames himself, then," Loki concluded for her heavily. She nodded, looking around.

"I want to walk the inside perimeter before we do anything, just make sure we find any weak spots and take care of them before i start working on my bike," she told him. So they did.

"How did you get to be where you are now?" he asked her when they were a few minutes into their task.

"The same night…Brad completely shut down, he went on autopilot. Flew us away from the city, put us on a landing pad at a military installation that was several towns over. It's what he did before, he was a military pilot. It's how he got us out of the tower, to begin with. He wouldn't talk about Marie or the girls, went straight to strategy while my kids slept in the helicopter. We considered staying at the base, but it was too open, and we didn't know if there were any infected. We stayed at the chopper until the morning, then we moved the kids into a hangar, locked them in with me while my husband and Brad raided what was left for supplies and fuel. The two of them made the call while they were gone to go back to our home, back to the penthouse. They would scout it out, see how badly it was wrecked, and come back for me and the kids. It was a quick trip, and before the day was over, we had a plan. Every day, we flew to the tower. Brad would land, and I would lock Harper in the tool shed that you've seen in the garden. The boys would post on the roof of it with their pistols. Brad and Samuel would stand several yards from the access door, I would unchain it and open it, and they would pick off whatever came in, me taking the stragglers with knives or a handgun. We eventually made our way inside the stairwell, and just mowed them down as we went. Locking off access doors for each floor that we cleared. It took about a month, but soon we had the tower clear. Took almost six months to clear the sewer line that we use, and well…now here we are."

They were back to the unit that held her bike, and Sam leaned down to unlock it, Loki lifting the door for her after she did. She unlocked a unit across from that one and he lifted that door as well, revealing a workshop inside of it. Sam went to the side of the unit, and powered on a generator. Loki watched her return to the unit with the bike, and sit down to remove her boots. Kicking them off, she removed her long-sleeved over shirt and reached for the button on her pants.

Loki turned his back quickly, "May I ask what you are doing?"

He heard Sam laugh, "Aw, so chivalry isn't dead," she teased. "Relax, I have on shorts underneath," Loki turned around to see her in her camisole and shorts, which left nothing to the imagination, and showed off everything she had…including her bruising. His eyes widened at colours painted across her chest and arms, her shirt rising when she bent to put her boots back on, revealing more serious coloring on her abdomen and hips. "The armor pieces are too heavy for me to use power tools at the same time, we'll safe in here all day," she explained, kicking off the kickstand of her bike and wheeling it to the work area.

"Does that not hurt?" he gaped.

"What?" she asked as she gathered random tools.

"All of…" Loki gestured to her body with a sweep of his hand, "that."

"Like hell," she countered, "but if this life has taught me anything, it's to push through the pain. So I am."

Loki joined her in the work area; lifting things, handing over tools to her.

"And your story?" he prodded while they worked.

Sam laughed, "Ha! Mine's easy. Grew up in a small mountain hick town with ignorant religious hick parents. Married the guy that knocked me up with Michael at 16, he joined the army when he turned 18, and we moved away. I grew up, had Lee, learned I didn't need to live within the confines of my ignorant upbringing, and we split. He didn't want to pay child support, and I didn't chase him. That's when I met Brad, when I was on my own and raising the boys. We dated for awhile, but it just wasn't right. He never could take that I could always see through his bullshit, at least not at that time in his life. So we maintained a solid friendship, and went to England together one summer. It's where I met my husband. We met at a pub in Merseyside - do you know that area, at all?" She looked up to Loki.

"Hm?" He asked, "Why would I?"

"Your accent, it's very English. Was I wrong?"

"Ah. Not entirely, no. And no, I'm not familiar with that…area," he smiled, he hoped convincingly.

"Oh, well we were both big Everton supporters. He was thrilled that he found a 'rare breed,' an American woman who loved and knew soccer, his team, drank beer, and could build an engine, " she glanced to Loki and smiled, "He was already in the middle of a transfer from his job to the states, and we got married about three months after we met."

"No courting phase, then?"

Sam snorted laugh, "No. There was no point, we'd both been married before, and we knew what we wanted. We just knew that we were made for each other," she smiled softly, her eyes faraway. "I can't believe how much work we've done…this baby looks brand new," she said pridefully, putting away some of the tools.

"You are quite the magician," Loki commented, watching her stretch her arms above her head and to the side, stopping briefly to say 'ow' before she put her bike away and shut down the generator.

"Your turn, Luke. What's your story?" Sam asked, as they closed and locked up the various units. Sam stuffed her armor and leather into her bag, pulling her long sleeved shirt back on despite the heat. It was well into the afternoon, and the sun was beginning to go down, they had worked for most of the day.

"Ah, I already told you. I was a prince. I was robbed of my birthright, or so I thought, and blinded myself with jealous rage and misplaced feelings of inadequacy. I tried to rule your realm, was imprisoned, saved your realm, destroyed the relationship I had with my family, and was exiled to live without them or the things that mattered most to me," 'Until now,' he thought, feeling the magic spark beneath the his fingertips.

Sam stared at him, her eyebrow quirked. She put her bag on her shoulder, and they began walking to the manhole when she started laughing.

"Nice. I'll be around when you want to tell me the _real _story, Little Prince. Now come on, I'm starving," Loki watched her disappear down the hole, and couldn't help the smile that crossed his face. If he didn't know any better, he believed that he just might be growing fond of Sam.

* * *

Sam unlocked the door to Brad's room, having showered and thrown her hair up into a bun and changed into sweats after dinner, she was tired of avoiding their problems. She wasn't surprised to see him across his bed, the bottle on the floor almost empty. She shut the door quietly, scooped up the bottle, and climbed into his bed. She nudged him onto his back, fitted herself into the crook of his arm on her back and took a long pull from the bottle. The tequila burned a familiar path to her gut and she welcomed the warm heady buzz that she hadn't felt in years.

"You've been holding out on me, you bastard," she said, punching him lightly in the ribs. "I didn't know you had any tequila left in here." Brad took the bottle and put it on his nightstand, wrapping his arms around her tightly. She could feel his body shaking with silent sobs. "I'm so sorry, Brad…" she whispered, not sure what else to say, tears stinging her eyes. "It wasn't your fault."

"I miss her," he whispered into Sam's hair, she could feel his hot tears roll down her neck into her shirt. She embraced him as tightly as she could without hurting herself.

"I know you do," she whispered back, "but we need you. _I_ need you, okay?" She felt him nod. "We're a team, remember? I can't do this without you to keep me in check," she couldn't hold back the tears, now.

The two of them lay there in the dark, the tequila buzzing them into a hazy sleep, holding onto each other for dear life like they had for years.

* * *

**AN: Shout out to JigokuShoujosRevenge for totally getting it. There's a ton of fics out there with angsty Loki that needs to make a change in himself and yadda yadda. I didn't want mine to be like that, my Loki has come full circle, accepted his lot and had his realizations well before meeting Sam. I also really wanted to take the time in this chapter to show how close Sam and Brad are, how deep their friendship goes, and to start building a dynamic between Loki and Sam.  
SO EXCITED that I got another follower! eeek!**

**Shameless plug, go read my other fic, ReRoute. I'm kind of falling in love with it.**


	9. Chapter Eight

_Our lips are sewn, our ears are filled with the constant drone of the unfulfilled. But we'll never fall if we stand for something. We stand for something._

* * *

Loki had waited for Harper to return from wherever it was that she vanished to, seemingly only when her mother was out. He was sitting on her end of the shared balcony, his legs dangling over the railing. He could see straight down, two stories below, to where her rope stopped at a window with no glass. Loki had paid acute attention to the young girl and her whereabouts, he was curious about her comings and goings, and how she kept it from the rest of her family. Fiddling with energy balls to pass the time, he would flick them to the surrounding buildings and blow out their windows. It felt good, having tangible magic again. He didn't have to wait long before he heard her scrabbling around below him. He could see her, she had her hair in a braid down her back similar to her mother's when he had first met her, that same long blade on a strap on her back. This time, he knew he smelled blood. He had toyed with the idea of teleporting into the broken window to see just what was in there, but he wasn't quite strong enough yet to go to places he hadn't been to already.

"I could pull you up, if you'd like. It would save your shoulders the effort," Loki called out, smiling down a toothy grin at the child.

Harper glared up and him and continued her climb in silence.

"Suit yourself, then," he said, swinging his legs over and hopping down from the rails. Harper joined him in just under thirty seconds, Loki counted them. She stood before him, about a yard and a half away so that she wasn't craning her neck to look up at him. Loki waited, patiently, staring intently into her warm and angry little brown eyes. He could feel the anger and energy emanating from her, practically rolling off of her in waves. When he could feel that she couldn't stand it any longer, right as she was opening her mouth to berate him for his invasion of her space and her life, Loki brought his palm up and a brilliant emerald-green orb appeared, hovering there.

Harper stilled, the tension leaving her small body. She stood up straighter, her hand resting on the handle of her blade. "What is that?" she whispered, half fascination and half fear in her voice.

"It's my secret," Loki whispered lowly back to her, grinning in a conspiratorial fashion, passing it back and forth between his hands before gently moving it to float to her face before it dissipated into glittering dust before her eyes.

"What are you?"

"I am a god. Or, I was," he shrugged, leaning back casually and enjoying her confusion.

"Your name isn't Luke…is it?"

"I am Loki," he gave a short bow, "of nowhere. I have no home, I have no people. I simply am."

"Why are you telling me this? Why are you showing me this?" Harper dropped her hands to her sides.

"You're awfully accepting, young one," Loki mused.

"Look around," she retorted, "I'll believe anything."

Loki laughed, surprised by her wit. "I'm telling you my secret to place my life into your hands. To gain your trust by giving you mine. Your mother is a great deal important to me, as you are to her-"

Harper scoffed.

"You are," Loki assured her.

"If I was important to her, I wouldn't be locked up in my room all the time. 'Harper, go to your room. Harper, stay here. Harper, I'm locking you in, you'll be safe, I'll come back for you.' It's bullshit and-"

"Does your mother allow such language?" Loki interceded her ranting.

"She wouldn't if she knew," Harper grinned a crooked grin.

"Than it's not something I'll allow in my presence, either. You're a smart girl, speak like it," Loki took a chance by being stern with her, and he watched as Harper looked at him with critical eyes. Loki continued while she considered her options. "Have you ever considered that your mother loves you so dearly that she does everything, including keeping you locked in this tower, to keep you from harm?"

He could tell that Harper hadn't thought of that.

"Why is my mom important to you?" she finally asked.

"That's a long story, that will require the telling of your little secret," Loki nodded towards the still dangling rope. "I'll trade mine for yours, have we a deal?" He extended his hand towards her.

Harper looked at his hand, "Nothing's gonna come out of that, is it?" Loki was happy to laugh a genuine laugh.

"No, you have my word."

They shook hands, Harper leaning over the railing and looking down.

"When they cleared the tower they filled the stairwells, too, sealing everything out, and me in here. After my dad…he used to take me out a lot, and without him…Two floors down is the pool, there's a sun deck and everything. I started off just going down there to get out of the penthouse, it's so hard to be here sometimes, especially without my dad. He was the only one that really got me. So to pass my time, I cleared the pool area out. It's not hard when you can just break a big window and throw the broken stuff out of it. I found the manuals on keeping the pool, and everything I needed was right there at first. I know how to work the generators, and we keep everything for them in the shed on the roof. The pool has it's own, so I use it, no one notices any missing generator stuff because they use it, too. When Mike powers on the elevators for my mom to use, I go out and get whatever I need for it. I climb the rope to get in and out of the penthouse without anyone knowing about it, and use the elevator to the sixth floor. Down and out through the garage."

"How? Your brothers can barely lift those covers-"

"I don't take the tunnels. My dad had paths all over the city, he lined the roads with cars to make a maze. Only one or two of the infected can really ever get through those at a time without running into sharp sticks or poles that he rigged up," she explained.

"That's why I smell blood when you return," Loki said softly to himself.

Harper nodded, "Yeah, Mom goes out every couple of weeks or so to get things from the storage units or on her arena trips. So I can keep the paths pretty clear."

Loki was impressed, it was a sentiment that was happening often with this family. "How were you taught all of this?"

Harper puffed with pride, at this, "My dad. He could do anything. When mom and Brad would take the boys scouting for stuff, or clear the tunnels, he would take me with him. He showed me how to fight, how to move, how to grow things in the garden. He believed in me, he knew that I could do things."

Loki said nothing as the sadness filled her eyes. There was a sudden peal of lightning across the sky, and Loki flinched, surprised.

Harper didn't seem to notice. "How long is your story?" she asked.

"Incredibly," Loki said distractedly, gazing warily at the horizon.

Harper moved to go into her room, "I need to take a shower, the blood is starting to make my clothes stick together. It's gross. Will you be out here later?" She asked.

Loki gave her his full attention, surprised by her shift in how she regarded him, now. "I will be here," he promised her.

The moment she closed her french doors, Loki turned around to face his red-caped brother. He said nothing, only stalked to "his side" of the balcony and made sure that the glass door was locked and secured with the shutters drawn inside.

"Brother!" Thor boomed merrily, "Your magic is returning!"

Loki cursed silently and wove a silencing spell around them to keep their conversation to where only they could hear. "And your volume never left," he snarked.

"How fares thee?" Thor moved to clap Loki on the back.

Loki stepped aside, sudden rage blooming in his chest. "I've been exiled on a poisoned planet for a decade, you-"

"Brother? What troubles you?" Thor interrupted him, concerned.

"What _troubles me_, Thor, is that you swore to protect this realm and you've left it and it's people to rot. How has this benefitted their race? How is this preferred over my rule? A rule that wouldn't have allowed this to ever have happened in the first place!" Loki hissed.

Thor was taken aback at the sudden ferocity in his brother's words and features. It took him a moment to recover himself.

"I cannot protect the humans from themselves," he said sadly, his jaw clenching. "It is not my place."

"_Lies_," Loki seethed. "You've hidden away with your woman for a _decade_ and allowed them to suffer. You've kept your kingdom, you've kept your love, and your pride. These people have lost everything and it matters not to you. 'Hail the mighty Thor, protector of Midguard,' indeed…" Loki turned his back to Thor, pacing angrily.

Thor charged forward, lurching Loki up by his shoulder, "WHAT WOULD YOU HAVE ME DO?" he roared into Loki's face. Loki released an energy ball large enough to knock Thor off of him, but allow him to remain on his feet. "What would you have me do?" he calmly asked. Before Loki could respond, Thor tilted his head, a sudden realization hitting him.

"Brother…do you…you care for these humans."

"Don't be a fool, Thor," Loki scoffed, turned away and looked out over the night sky.

"Your magic may have returned, but your silver tongue has left you. Loki, brother, if you truly care for what happens to these people, come home with me. Now. We must speak to Father-"

"He's not my father!" Loki roared, turning his blazing eyes to Thor. "He is not my father, and I have no home, nor do I wish to return to yours." Loki turned his back to Thor, leaning forward, his hands on the rails, chest heaving as he reigned himself in.

"Brother-"

"Leave me, Thor," Loki interrupted him quietly, resolute. "I've nothing more to say."

Loki turned when he heard Harper's door open, Thor was nowhere to be seen. He met her in the middle of the balcony, settling into a chair while she did the same.

"So, you were saying about my mom?" Harper asked.

"Yes, but I suppose for you to truly understand, I must start from the beginning," Loki said thoughtfully.

For the first time, Loki began telling his story.

* * *

Bradley groaned as he rolled onto his side, stretching his arm out and grasping empty sheets. Cracking an eye, he saw that Sam wasn't there. He briefly wondered if he had dreamed her clambering into bed with him in his drunken stupor, but then decided against that notion when he saw some of her hairs on the pillow. He could smell her in his sheets, that wouldn't do.

'Guess it's time to put myself back together again,' he thought with a sigh, burrowing into the pillows for a few minutes more before rising, stripping the bed, and making his way to the shower in the hall. Standing under the steaming stream longer than he needed to, he regretfully shut it off and dried himself, quickly dressing in sweats and a t-shirt and making his way towards the kitchen for something to eat. Scratching the back of his neck and watching the floor tiles as he passed Lee's door, he glumly remembered that they needed to talk. Then he grimaced when he remembered that he _really_ needed to talk with Sam, get her to see reason where the kids were concerned. Glancing up halfway through the living room, Brad stopped short at the sight before him.

It was Sam; she was seated at the kitchen's bar, her hair was down and loose, a carefree smile on her face, her eyes glittering as she listened to Loki murmuring to her. Brad bristled at how close they were sitting to each other, thighs almost touching. Crossing his arms across his chest huffily, he stood and watched them, clearly unnoticed. He didn't like how Sam had dropped her guard for this guy, didn't like the way he looked at her; like she was the glass of water to his being lost in the desert. It reminded him of a few guys she dated before meeting Samuel, and he wanted to bury his fist into the guys face. Sam was _his_ to care for, and he knew he had dropped the ball a bit, but still…he couldn't help the protective territorial flare up in his chest every time he saw Sam engage with Loki. Brad gritted his teeth and turned to stalk away right as Sam looked up and beamed a smile at him.

"Hey, I was beginning to think you had your first ever hangover," she joked, knowing that he didn't get hangovers. "I made some coffee, fresh grind, just how you like it?" Brad didn't answer, and her smile began to falter. He felt like a jerk and caved, walked into the kitchen and poured a cup. It was good, and he couldn't help the glare he sent Loki's way over his coffee mug.

"I see you're still around," he grumbled to himself from across the kitchen, Sam didn't hear him, but he knew she could feel the tension building, could see it in her face.

"Yes, well, where I come from you don't heed a drunk man's wishes," Loki taunted him, smiling at him.

Sam's eyebrows knitted together in confusion, she glanced between the two men and sat up a little straighter.

"And just where would that be, huh? And what about your 'friends,' how did you end up alive and them all dead? JUST in time to save Sam? What's the real deal here, man?" Bradley clunked his coffee mug down hard, the strong brew forgotten in his anger. He was further angered at how the tall long haired bastard across the room wasn't angry. He looked at Bradley amused, like he was a little kid throwing a tantrum. Maybe he was, but he didn't care.

"Now wait a minute-" Sam started to admonish him. Bradley almost came unglued when he saw Loki place a hand on her shoulder and squeeze reassuringly. Then she _smiled_ up at him, if he had had anything in his gut besides tequila and coffee for the last few days, he would have suppressed the urge to vomit.

"It's alright, Sam," he said to her. Then he looked over to Brad, "I don't know what I've done to you that is so offensive, but whatever it is, you have my apologies. I'm here for the same reasons that you are, I don't want to just survive any longer. I'd like to live again, and Sam has given me that kindness. So long as she'll have me, I'll remain."

Brad opened his mouth to retort when Sam stood, "Hey, why don't you come outside with me, it's beautiful today," she offered, reaching over and grasping his hand in two of hers. Brad allowed her to pull him outside before shooting another glare over his shoulder to Loki, who's response was the grin at him. 'Bastard,' he thought.

Sam slid the door closed behind them and shoved him down onto a lounger hard with both hands to his shoulders. "Really?" She glared down at him.

"Just tell me why, Sam," he asked, still angry, but not with her. Never with her.

"I owe him my life-" she started.

"Bullshit," he cut her off. "How many people helped us out along the way, that we left to die? Or in the cities? What makes this guy so different that you bring him home with you?" He knew he was being a jerk, and he didn't care.

Sam sat at the head of the lounger, throwing her legs across his lap and huffed before responding. "I don't engage with anyone outside of you guys. It's been that way since…well, you know. I don't know if it's Luke or if it's just because he isn't in the family, but I like how he makes me feel."

Brad cocked his head to the side, raising an eyebrow. "Not like that!" she quickly amended, "It's just…" she looked away from him, her green eyes so sad and distant. Brad watched her pick at her cuticles. "When Luke looks at me, he sees me. He isn't waiting for me to fall apart, he's not angry with me, he doesn't need anything from me, or wish that I was someone else. It's a nice feeling to have…" she trailed off, looking to Brad hoping he understood.

She had described him, Lee, Michael, and Harper respectively, and he felt like the wind had been knocked out of him. She was right. They all expected things out of her, or took things from her, without realizing what they were doing. When he told Loki that she didn't have anything more to give, it wasn't because she was grieving, more so because they had taken it all from her over the years. He could see it in the way she walked, the way she carried herself. He had unknowingly allowed her to take on their burdens while he mourned or kept busy or fought with her.

Brad sighed heavily through his nostrils, "Fine. I'll play nice," he conceded. "We need to make some changes around here, though, Sam. Have you talked with Lee?"

"We spoke this morning," she reclined in the lounger, "He was apologetic, but insistent that I allow him to start coming outside again."

"He's right," Brad leaned back on his elbows on the lounger next to the one he was sitting on, looking at her as she slid her eyes closed in the sunlight. She still wore her sweatpants and a wife beater tank top, her bruising still noticeable.

"It'll be less on all of us with Luke around. If you trust him, trust him to take care of you and Lee outside the tower." Brad knew he was playing a dangerous card, but wasn't sure how else to convince Sam to loosen her reigns with her middle child. He watch her chew her bottom lip thoughtfully.

"Okay," she finally muttered, opening her eyes "Okay, but he's not coming into the cities, I won't allow that," she shook her head.

"Baby steps, babe," Brad laughed, reaching forward to tickle her feet. When she squealed and jumped to get away from him, she jerked her hips and there was an audible popping sound, followed by a whimper. Brad supported her easily, apologizing to her. They both laughed a little, the tension still there. "Hey, gimpy, I'll go break the news to Lee, you go ice yourself or something. Try to take it easy, okay? We kinda need you around here," he joked, poking her in her less injured side.

Sam nodded and shuffled herself inside, sliding the door closed and leaving him to his thoughts.

'I need you,' he thought sadly.

* * *

**AN: I just can't help but feel badly for poor Brad. Poor bastard.**

**Created an Instagram account to provide some visuals for you guys. :) rebirthfanfic is the account. (I'm so original, you love it.)**


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